A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  There was an official-looking letter from the agency and a letter in a cheap gray envelope addressed with only Peter’s name. The letter was in Polish.

  “My mother, she wrote this to me. The priest in our village passed it on to someone in contact with the Scottish part of the organization. I can write to her the same way but not too often. It could be risky for her.”

  He gave one big deep body-shaking sob. He quickly grabbed the napkin and turned the distress into a cough. Chiara reached for Peter’s hand and leaned over, and, in pure Scots, said, “If that offer of a digestive is still on, I’ll have a cognac.”

  The weeks leading up to Christmas always brought more advertising than usual, so a bigger paper. Don McLeod, master of the “wee fiddly bits,” had three pencils, one behind each ear and one in his hand, as he marked and deleted his way through stories and fillers, penciling in the blank spaces in the layout. Joanne was sorting through her notes to finish a feature on Christmas holiday fare and “wumen’s bibs ’n’ bobs,” as Don so kindly put it.

  “I saw McAllister, he got back midmorning—”

  Joanne looked across at Don.

  “—he’s fine, but since he’s stuck at home and because he can’t shout yet, I’m giving him all the shite jobs. Plus, I get to do the editorial. I’ll do it on the state of the roads, that’ll annoy the hell out o’ him. Our star reporter has promised to deliver a typewriter to him—whenever he gets back from wherever he is.”

  “Any news on Father … on the priest?”

  “Still searching.”

  “Don, do you believe the priest could have done this?”

  “I don’t know, lass. I’ve told you I have ma doubts about the Polish man, then again, we don’t know for sure he didn’t do it. But Father Morrison? Let’s just say it would shock the hell out of me.” He put down his pencil and looked at her. “And very little indeed shocks me. Then we are back to the question, if not one of those two, who, what kind o’ monster, would hurt and kill a wee boy?”

  She shivered. Every mention of the boy distressed her. “I’ll happily deliver the work to McAllister.” She handed over her sheets of copy. “I can go now if you like.” She needed to get out. She would never let Don know how much she needed to see McAllister for herself. Reports on his well-being were not enough. But before she could get down the stairs, she had to run back to grab the phone. She had given up expecting Don to pick up the receiver when there was a woman around to do it for him.

  “Gazette. Bill! Hello, stranger. Where are you and how are you?”

  “Great. I’m back and at the works,” he replied. “You?”

  “Oh, you know. Busy. The girls are getting excited about Chiara and Peter’s wedding.”

  “I’ve good news.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye, I’ve managed to sort out that wee hiccup in the business. I’ve got to put some figures together and the county building department will pay out on work already finished. I told you it would be a’ right. You should have more faith in me.”

  “Yes, you were right. That’s great news.” She couldn’t take his crowing. “Listen, I have to go. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Right you are. I’ll see you at home the night. See if you can leave the bairns with my ma and dad.”

  “The girls are at your parents’ anyway because it’s press night, remember. I’ll be out too, I have to try on my outfit for the wedding—I’m matron of honor, remember.” She frantically searched for a way out. “But I won’t be back tonight. I promised Chiara I’d stay with her, we’re having a girls only last-night-of-freedom party. I’m really sorry, I didn’t know you were coming home.”

  Chiara will back me up, she knew.

  “Being with your friends is fine. But you be home thenight. You’re my wife.”

  “I promised weeks ago.” I may be your wife but you don’t own me—goodness, I sound like a wee girl. That gave her courage. “It’s all arranged, Bill.”

  “Unarrange it then. I’ll be waiting up for you.”

  He hung up. Joanne sat staring at a dead receiver when she realized Don was looking at her.

  “Were you listening in?” she snapped.

  “No, I was not listening in. This is the office phone.” He turned back to his work. “And don’t take it out on me, whatever it is.”

  An engine with snowplow had cleared the tracks, the trains were running, albeit slowly, and McAllister was immensely relieved to be home. The taxi from the station had had to take a roundabout route to his house. Black ice lurked on the braes. His neighbor and former landlady had set the fire, cleaned up, and left soup on the stove. “Just a wee warm-through, Mr. McAllister,” she told him. “That’s all it needs.”

  Hands wrapped around a mug of soup, he watched the slow shifting beam from the rising sun stream through his kitchen window, a healing gold-pink light from a William Blake painting of Creation. It brought a sigh of gratitude.

  Thank goodness soup is the national dish, McAllister thought. Otherwise I might starve.

  Rob was on his way with a typewriter. He would need it. DCI Westland was due later. But the thought of facing questions, commiserations and plain nosiness was more than he could abide. He was heartsick at the priest’s escape. But write it he would. All of it; not just the facts, the plain cold he-did I-did, that would never cover the beaming innocence of the man’s smile, the sheer effrontery of the man’s self-belief. And then there was that niggle, just like the itch under his bandage that he could not scratch, that flea of an idea that kept him from a comfortable doze or a dwam, the idea so disturbing that he couldn’t, wouldn’t face it. What if I’m wrong?

  The bell rang. The door was unlocked. Rob walked in, lugging the awkward machine. Joanne came close behind with newspapers, copy paper and brown paper bag.

  “This is great.” Rob grinned at the silent editor. “I can say what I like and you can’t reply. Christmas is coming, so, in lieu of a goose, I got you this.” He produced a bottle of Glenlivet. “I raided the petty cash and forged your OK on the chit. I put it down as a bribe to a councilor.”

  McAllister took the bag from Joanne, found gingerbread, some scones, half a dozen floury rolls and half a pound of best Ayrshire bacon.

  “Ta.” He raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

  “And for my next trick”—Rob waved the pages of a hastily written article—“whilst you were careering around the mountains having a wee holiday with all thon bonnie nurses to take care of you …”

  Joanne was pouring tea and almost spilled it as she watched Rob do an impression of a conjuror.

  “… I’ve been conferring with my source in the procurator’s office, and Karl unpronounceable has been let out.” Rob was pleased with the reaction. “Aye,” he went on, “Jimmy McPhee rounded up some of his many cousins to vouch for the Pole. They gave a statement directly to the procurator—they’ll not talk to Tompson—saying Karl was with them on the night the wee boy went missing. DCI Westland and the procurator agree they have no real evidence against the Pole. Apart from finding his coat near the canal, it was all circumstantial. So now, he’s out, and Tompson is livid.

  “One more episode to add to my masterpiece: Polish aristocrat finds happiness in the Highlands; friend arrives after many heart-rending adventures to bring happy tidings from count’s long-lost mother; Polish friend gets caught up in an as-yet-unsolved crime; those outcasts of Scotland, the Traveling people, they come to his rescue; then … in the nick of time, he’s let out for the wedding of his fellow countryman to an Italian chip-shop heiress, where he will be best man. They’ll lap it up.”

  Rob looked into McAllister’s eyes. Weary, defeated; that was what Rob thought he saw. No, can’t be, he told himself, not My Hero Mr. John McAllister.

  “Aye, you’re right. I don’t have an ending.”

  Joanne kept her counsel. She’d heard it all in the taxi to McAllister’s house. There was nothing to add. She offered to make more tea. McAllister refused. Sh
e stood to leave. She took her coat. She looked at him. He stared back.

  “I haven’t heard the details, but I’m sorry about Father Morrison getting away. I know it means a lot to you.”

  His face, what with the bandages and bruising, showed little, but his eyes …

  Rob picked up on the atmosphere. “Right, I’m off back to the office. I need at least an hour to get my taxi money from bringing the typewriter. Mrs. Smart, keeper of the petty cash, is immune to my charms.”

  Joanne followed, shutting the door quietly behind them. The sight of her indomitable boss so reduced was disorienting. But the next time she found herself alone with him, the old trust and easiness would return, of that she was certain. We have seen each other raw, open, without defenses, and I like this McAllister better. But I have to work with him, no place for anything more; I’m a married woman and married women can’t have single male friends—more’s the pity.

  “Rob, I need to walk. I’ll see you back at the office.”

  He looked, waved, and left her to her dilemmas.

  Joanne walked a roundabout road to the office, adding about one mile to a half-mile journey, not noticing her exact whereabouts. She thought until her head hurt and her nose turned red, and her toes she could no longer feel. Only her hands were still cozy—sheepskin mittens and anger at her husband kept them warm.

  This part of the town was all crescents and avenues and walks, too genteel to be streets. Built in solid stone, the occasional mansion and the semidetached houses and rows of terraces hid large back gardens. An occasional beech or oak or sycamore towered high above the solid Protestant dwellings. Low walls along the front gardens were indented by regular pockmarks, where iron railings once stood before being sacrificed for munitions in the first war. The earth was bare now; the fallen leaves had been swept, gathered, and burned. Joanne knew for certain that in spring, there would be careful displays of snowdrop and crocus and daffodil and jonquil. Some gardens were elaborate constructions of glittering granite studded with dormant Alpine plants and varieties of heather. Like a mortuary display, Joanne thought. I’m going to have blackcurrant bushes and raspberry canes and rows of cabbages and marigolds and sunflowers in my garden, and I’ll plant night-scented stock outside the bedroom windows. My prefab, my very own home, it may be tiny, but the garden is big, I could really make it really lovely. If I decide to take it, that is.

  She continued walking through the well-mannered backcloth, then, rounding a corner onto the main thoroughfare, the gardens ended abruptly. The high stone wall of the prison that sat smack bang in the middle of the town began. The menace enclosed within the walls was palpable, especially on gray winter days. She crossed to the other side of the road. Jamie’s murderer would be brought here. She had to hold on to the conviction that he would be found. There was a sense that, forevermore, she would see this place, this time in her life, not as a time when she began to find her wings, but more as a time when she lost her innocence. Children could be killed. Children could be harmed. That had never occurred to her before.

  Down the steep hill toward the river, holding the iron railing for balance—the paving slabs glistened ominously in parts—she made for the river that cut the town in two, running water being her place for thinking.

  I have to tell him. She turned the dogleg of the descent.

  How on earth will I manage that? She cut around the back of the church.

  He’ll never let me go. She crossed the road to the riverbanks.

  How can I put the girls through the shame? She was walking away from the town center toward the Islands.

  How will I face Bill’s parents—and my sister? She reached the war memorial.

  I hope I don’t end up in hospital again. She was crossing the suspension bridge that led to the infirmary, stopping in the middle, looking down through the galloping flow, now a steel gray flecked with silver, cold blue snowmelt swelling the river to halfway up the grassy banks. The incoming tide added to the flow and counterflow, setting off crests of white horses that pranced in irregular silver ranks across the wide waters.

  He is always sorry afterward—so he says. She reached the opposite bank and turned toward town again.

  He came to the hospital to visit me that time he broke my collarbone. It was turning to dusk although only two o’clock in the afternoon.

  He said he was really sorry. She was shamed by the remembrance of her cowardly gratitude when he walked into the hospital with a box of chocolates.

  I stay for the girls. That was ever the excuse.

  On her left, the cathedral was melting into the sky, and downriver, the bridges and churches and distant hills, in various shades of a nothing color, made Joanne feel she was walking in a dreamscape.

  Passing through the final stone arch of the bridge back into town, the idea sparked.

  “One thousand pounds.”

  She rushed up Bridge Street, hurrying so as not to lose courage—yet again. Panting, she stumbled into the sudden warmth of the reporters’ room, her feet painful, protesting against the sudden change in temperature. Don was alone except for the paraffin stove set on full blast, a pile of copy and a cup of tea that smelled distinctly of a distillery.

  “Pleased to see me or have you been running?”

  Until Joanne had worked with him, drunk with him and begun to know him, Don McLeod would never have seemed a likely candidate for the role of Sir Galahad. A Celtic Sam Spade? That was more like it.

  “Don, can you do something for me?”

  “Can? Probably. Will? Maybe.”

  “I need to warn Bill that someone may come looking for one thousand pounds.”

  He looked her over. He took his time. She could feel the blush spread from her cheeks down her neck.

  “Mrs. Ross, one thing I will not do is get involved in family matters—”

  “Fine.” She turned away. “Forget I asked.”

  “—unless you can give me a very good reason why I should.” He finished.

  “Well, it might mean I don’t come into work covered in bruises and unable to sit at my typewriter,” she snapped.

  And knowing how much it cost her to admit this, he said, “Good enough.”

  “Really? You’ll help?” He nodded. “Then maybe you could call, or meet, or somehow let Bill know all about the matter of the one thousand pounds.”

  “Aye, I could.” He nodded again.

  “Then I want you to help me figure out how I can hold that over my husband and buy myself out of a marriage.” Her look, as she said this, was defiant and scared and she suddenly seemed three inches taller to the much shorter Don.

  “I’ve taught you well, lass.” He winked. “Leave it to me.”

  “Gazette.”

  “Joanne, my dear. How are you?” They were almost finished with the edition and Joanne was weary, so the sound of Margaret’s voice was more than welcome. “I’m looking for that scallywag son of mine to see if he will be home for dinner tonight.”

  “He’s not here but I’ll get him to call you.”

  “Thank you.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you would be free? It’s press night; I know the children are at their grandparents’, so why don’t you join me? There’s a delicious supper prepared. Don’t worry, it wasn’t me that cooked,” Margaret McLean gushed on. “I’d love the company. Angus has some meeting or other, and I’m sure Rob will be out chasing some girl. Could you possibly join me?”

  “I’d love to. I’ve to pop into the Corellis’ to check my dress for the wedding, but that will take half an hour at most.” She hesitated. “Margaret, could I possibly stay the night?” Bill would never find her there.

  “My dear, of course. That will be fun.”

  Margaret put down the phone, pleased Joanne had not seen through her subterfuge.

  My oh my, she said to herself. That wonderful young woman is being slowly smothered; we’ll have to sort something out.

  “Gazette.” Rob took the phone call from WPC Ann McPherson. />
  “We have to talk,” she said.

  “Uh-oh, it’s always serious when a woman says that.” He certainly hoped it wasn’t serious. I like her, he thought, I really like her. But I’m too young for serious.

  They met in the café near the post office. As usual, she took the lead.

  “First, can we pretend I’m not a police officer when I ask these questions?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just plowed on.

  “I know you, I know what a nosy parker you are, and I get the feeling you know more than you think you do about the goings-on in the house next door to you—if you get my meaning.”

  Rob hated the way, at nearly twenty years of age, he always looked guilty when caught out. He couldn’t do blasé; he’d practiced in front of the mirror and just looked plain glaikit. He couldn’t recall anything in particular that he had done wrong. But then again, this very morning, he had been considering how to get into the locked mansion again—just for a wee nosy around.

  “I want you to think on this—is there anything, anything out of the ordinary, anything at all, that makes you suspicious about Father Morrison?”

  She paused, speaking carefully, not wanting Rob to see her dilemma—not yet. As a woman police constable, she was the lowest of the lowly. A glorified typist to most of her male colleagues, someone to bring along when women and children were involved and even then, many of the men thought her presence unnecessary. But WPC Ann McPherson wanted to be a real policewoman.

  “Another thing. I want you to trust DCI Westland.” She held up a hand. “I know, I know, you don’t like the police, but if you do think of anything, tell me. I promise it will go straight to him and not to your favorite inspector.”

  Rob wondered what she was trying to say. The memory of those shots of the defenseless boys, beaming at the camera for the most part but embarrassed to be photographed in the more compromising poses, made him take her suggestion seriously.