A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  “You wanted to talk to an inmate at the prison?”

  “Probably a wild goose chase.”

  “Aye, there are enough geese flying around right now to fill every Christmas table in the county.”

  “You don’t need to know any of this, Don. It’s not something anyone should ever have to see.”

  “Right.” He didn’t move. “But you’ll show me.”

  “In the safe.”

  Don took the envelope and emptied it onto the desk. McAllister turned away. Don leafed through the prints, ignored the negatives. He examined them carefully, in complete silence. He looked through them once more, laying two aside. He held them under the desk lamp. He examined the reverse. It was as though he was completely detached from the images, as though they were of the same interest as a corpse on a mortuary slab, fascinating, but with the soul removed. He stacked up the photographs except for two, put the rest back into the envelope and returned it to the safe.

  “Firstly,” he started, “all these photos are old. Secondly, most of them are not from here. The paper is different. I think they are filth bought on the black market. But these two”—he poked them apart with his pencil—“these two are from someone’s private collection. They’re not recent either. I need you to look again. Look at the paper, the size of the print, the color tone.”

  The man in the photograph was shown only from the neck down; the boy’s face was in profile. McAllister couldn’t bear to see the image, knowing he would take it to his grave, but knew he must. He looked at the borders. He looked at the printing technique. He turned it over and examined the watermark. He calculated the size. Then he nodded.

  “I see what you’re getting at. And yes, it looks exactly like the others.”

  “Right.” Don handed McAllister a cigarette and went around to the filing cabinet for the whisky. “This man in the prison. Where does he fit in?”

  McAllister explained.

  “Leave it with me.”

  It had taken all his guile to arrange the meeting. The prisoner, Davy Soutar, agreed to see the man as a favor to Jimmy McPhee. He had no idea that Don McLeod was in any way connected with a newspaper other than being an avid reader of the racing pages. He knew this because on the few occasions he had seen Don, there was always a copy of the racing pages protruding from the inside pocket of his jacket. A hint that Don might speak up for him on his application for a transfer to Glasgow also helped.

  Stepping into the prison, built from the same stone as the castle, and the courts, and the police station, the temperature was colder inside than out. A stench that could never be overcome by the smells of wallflower and daffodils and buddleia and pine resin and mown grass from the gardens outside the walls made Don shudder.

  Naturally, the prison guard knew Don McLeod. When given a nod, he stepped out of hearing. Don leaned across the table, talking rapidly. Davy Soutar listened. He closely resembled a weasel, with the same skinny narrow-shouldered frame and the same beady-eyed weighing-up-his-prey look in his eyes. He stared at Don, and when Don had finished speaking, he lost his feral confidence and instead looked exactly what he was—a victim. He wouldn’t meet Don’s eye and he refused to say a word. Don then placed a photograph between them. The Glasgow career criminal who had survived many stretches in prison, who ran with the razor gangs and the hard men, who had inflicted and had suffered knifings and beatings and killings and sadistic warders and a sadistic childhood, sat stone still, staring in any direction but that of the photo, his face as weeping wet as the walls of the prison cells.

  “I canny,” Davy pleaded, “I canny. I canny tell you. No one listens to me, ever. Besides, it’s all over with long since, and they got off with everything.”

  “If I say the name, Davy, just nod or shake your head.”

  “I canny. He’ll get to me. He knows where I am, he himself put me here, and if I said a word, he’d finish me off. And he can, it’d be no problem to him.”

  When Don reported back to McAllister, he counseled him to wait. Give it time, weeks, months, wait till it’s all died down, then do whatever it is you need to do.

  “I’m a star! I’ve hit the big time. Woo-hoo!”

  Rob danced around the office waving that morning’s Glasgow paper.

  “Here, in features, my article.”

  Joanne and Don would have liked to see the paper but with Rob whooping and laughing, waving it above his head, dancing a demented war dance, they couldn’t.

  “Hey, Geronimo! Give us a look.” Joanne grabbed the paper off him.

  “Have it, I’m away to buy some more copies. I pinched this one from the guard on the train.”

  Rob went flying out the door, straight into McAllister.

  “Sorry, boss. And thanks for everything.”

  “The lad did well,” Don commented.

  “He did that.” McAllister agreed.

  Joanne read quickly, then glanced at the editor.

  “This is good. Did you help?”

  “Not really. A bit of subbing. It’s his work and his story.”

  “He makes it very alive.”

  McAllister nodded. “Let’s hope we can turn out a newspaper with room for good, thoughtful stories.”

  “But we’ve still one more paper for this year, so off you go and shut yourself in your wee room and don’t come out until you’ve produced a leader worthy of this new future you’re on about.”

  “Yes, Mr. McLeod.” And this time McAllister did as he was bidden.

  As a wordsmith, McAllister prided himself on knowing an apposite word or phrase for every occasion, every landscape, every weather; but the past weeks were beyond description. He concluded that dreich, that good old Scottish standby, was far too mild for the scale of awfulness.

  Christmas had come and gone. In the Highlands, indeed in most parts of Scotland, the Dickensian Christmas was for storybooks. Church on Sunday, small gifts for the children and a fancier dinner than usual was Christmas for Presbyterians and their ilk. New Year was altogether another matter. Hogmanay, the house clean and tidy, sideboards heaving with drink, table laden with black bun and ham sandwiches, radios were tuned to a New Year ceilidh and those with a television watched Andy Stewart and the White Heather Club, everyone waited for the chimes of Big Ben to strike twelve. Then the New Year toast, first footing, more drink, black bun, lumps of coal, and many kept the tradition of giving a peck of salt. Hopefully your first-foot was a dark and handsome stranger. The round of visits to every relative and friend and neighbor went on as much as a fortnight into the New Year and longer in the far-flung islands that had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar.

  The collective hangover of New Year meant nothing much was done until at least the third week in January. Too many drinks, too many visitors, cars that wouldn’t start, buses that didn’t come, freezing nights that turned daytime sleet into black ice, burst pipes, sodden gardens and a dank layer of coal and coke and wood and peat smoke, brought on a collective misery. And as often as not, the river was in spate and threatening to burst its banks.

  Editorial finished for this week, McAllister reached once more for the list. He was convinced he knew who was responsible for the boy’s death; the details of how he had died were a mystery; proving it was impossible. There was no evidence that would stand up to a good defense advocate.

  At what point in his life the search for truth had become a quest, McAllister would never know. Coming to this small newspaper, having been given carte blanche to change it into what he knew it could be, that was a Herculean task that could not be completed by one man in one place, in one year. One decade might be more realistic. To change needed a change in the attitude of the community too. His time in Spain and his love of literature often conjured up memories that whisked him across the seas, across the Pyrenees, to mountains with no resemblance whatsoever to Ben Wyvis. It’s a ridiculous thought; me—Don Quixote tilting at windmills, with Don McLeod as my Sancho Panza. He smiled a rare smile and the resultant twinge in h
is jaw brought him back to the here and now and the lost cause of justice.

  The new version of the Highland Gazette; this could be a pioneering newspaper capable of tackling the great wall of silence surrounding the Church, the murky processes of the town council and the occasional rotten councilor like Mr. Findlay Grieg, who thought he was bomb-proof, the treatment of the unfortunates in children’s homes and orphanages, the state of some old people’s homes, which were only one step up from a poorhouse, our nineteenth-century prisons, our condemnation of unmarried mothers, our turning a blind eye to violence against women and children—the list could have gone on.

  We continue to congratulate ourselves on what a nice wee town we have. Yes, there are many many good points about living here, McAllister acknowledged that, but until there is justice for Jamie, I’ll not be able to appreciate them.

  “Thank goodness I never say maudlin rubbish like this out loud,” he muttered.

  It wasn’t until the end of January that McAllister had all he needed. DCI Westland had been gone nearly six weeks. Inspector Tompson was unbearably smug and completely safe. Father Morrison was dead and buried. The identity of the killer of wee Jamie would remain one of life’s great mysteries was the common consensus.

  The first piece of information came via the Reverend Macdonald. It was a completely innocuous conversation. Joanne and Rob were typing away, chatting in between bouts of typewriter wrestling, discussing the use of Gaelic speakers instead of secret codes in the last war.

  “They needn’t have bothered with Gaelic speakers, anyone from Glasgow is completely unintelligible to friend and foe,” she laughed.

  “I heard that,” McAllister said from across the room, where he was busy working on the layout of that week’s edition.

  “That was one of the problems my Annie had when she was a bridesmaid, she couldn’t understand the accents of those wee Italian Scottish girls.” She smiled at the memory. “And when the dreaded Inspector Tompson was questioning her, she missed a lot of what he was saying because of his accent and also because he was speaking at the poor child in his best Military Police sergeant shout.”

  McAllister and Rob simultaneously said, “What?”

  “Didn’t you know? My brother-in-law told me. Inspector Tompson was in the Military Police during the war. When he was demobbed, he became a policeman.”

  The second piece of information came from Jimmy via Don.

  “I don’t see how this will help any,” he said, “and my brother Keith willny swear to it, but he heard that sometime before I was there, Inspector Tompson was a part-time instructor at the boxing club in Glasgow. Early on in the war it was.”

  Another proof, or nonproof as McAllister termed it, he had kept to himself for some time. Comparing the photographs Don had singled out from the envelope still locked in the office safe with the group photograph of the boys from the boxing club, the one with Kenneth, his brother, and a very young Jimmy McPhee, the size was the same, the paper was the same, the printing looked similar, but so what? It proved nothing.

  And finally the nontestimony of Davy Soutar. Don had checked, and yes, it was the man himself who had had Davy Soutar transferred from Barlinnie so he could keep an eye on him.

  Then it was time. Two phone calls.

  “I’ve got what you were looking for. I think we should meet,” he said at the start of the first call.

  “Tonight. Not too late. Seven, I said. Don’t want to scare him off.” The second phone call.

  No turning back now.

  He parked the car between the streetlamps under skeletal sycamore trees, opposite the path to the Islands suspension bridge. He was early. He lit a cigarette and waited. The river with a low-pitched tinnitus roar filled the night. A car drew up behind him. The driver got out, checked in McAllister’s window, then walked around, opened the passenger door and took a seat. The smell of Brylcreem mixed with that of new wool.

  “Nice coat,” McAllister said. “New?”

  “What’s this rigmarole all about then?” Tompson seemed nervous but still very much in control.

  “As I told you on the phone, I’ve got what you were searching for.”

  “There was a proper police search. Anything you’ve found, if you have found anything, is police evidence.”

  “No, I don’t think you’ll want this handed over. You can probably wriggle out of a charge of destroying evidence but that’s too big a risk, especially if the procurator sees the contents. Your military greatcoat was really of no consequence. But you were seen wearing it when you grabbed the boy.

  “By a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, in the half dark, and they told everyone it was a hoodie crow.”

  “Yes. But just in case anyone else saw a man in a greatcoat that night, you left Karl’s coat on the canal banks. I presume you took his coat from the captain when you went to interview him on the ship. And I presume you were wearing your own coat when you put Jamie’s body into the water, weren’t you?”

  “Pure speculation. You’ll have to do better than that, McAllister.”

  “Davy Soutar. He was one of your earlier victims.”

  “I heard you wanted to speak to him. The prison governor asked my opinion, I told him you were out to make trouble, so you’ve no chance of getting near that thieving wee liar. And if by chance he does get to speak to you, his life will be no worth living. I’ll see to that.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve heard his story. He passed it on to a friend—a friend who can give him protection.”

  “And who will take a criminal’s word against mine? Wrong again, McAllister.”

  “Aye, that inquiry at the home you were all brought up in; you escaped that time, didn’t you? Another of your victims? He couldn’t take it anymore so he killed himself? And John Morrison Bain, he wasn’t going to turn you in, was he? After all, he took the photos. But I suppose it’s the way of it, first a victim, then a perpetrator.”

  “You know nothing, McAllister, nothing at all. I was an orphan, sent to that hellhole at five. John Bain was in the same dormitory. We grew up together, if you could call it that. We were survivors, friends, we looked out for each other.”

  Poor wee bugger, McAllister thought. He felt for the boy but not for the man; No wonder he is what he is.

  “The boxing club?”

  “Don’t tell me there’s something the grand know-it-all editor from down south doesn’t know? But you’ll not be here for much longer; I’m going to make sure you’re out of a job.”

  “I heard you were an instructor there. A good place to find victims.”

  “My my, Mr. Big Shot, you really fancy yourself as the great detective.”

  McAllister clenched his fist deep in his pocket, the key biting into his palm. He had struggled with this moment over the past weeks, ever since Rob had discovered the photos. The key? The envelope of filth? The two incriminating pictures? Which would he show first?

  Suddenly, he wanted this over with.

  “I have the boy’s door key. It didn’t burn. The shoelace that it was tied to did. No wonder you couldn’t find it, it was in there in the stove along with what was left of your old army coat. I tried it. It fits Jamie’s front door. They’re gone now, his mother and father, back to the Isles, couldn’t stay here; what happened to wee Jamie, it broke their hearts.”

  “You haven’t come up with anything that I can’t explain away.” Tompson laughed. “Is that it, McAllister? That’s all you’ve got? You’ll have to do better than that.”

  “So you did kill the boy?”

  “No. And since you’ll never prove anything, I might as well tell you. It was an accident. It was an accident I was even home at that time of the day. An accident I was there when the bell rang. I was about to go back on shift but when I opened the door, there he was; I picked him up to give him a shaking, put the fear of God into him. I closed my coat over him, took him over to John Bain’s studio. John—Father Morrison to you—he had this harmless wee … idiosyncrasy … h
e liked taking pictures of boys. I got him over there but the lad had peed himself and wouldn’t stop bawling so I shook him some more and he had some sort of fit, anyway he went blue, couldn’t breathe, and he died. Weak, he was. Nothing we could do.”

  “And you didn’t call an ambulance or take him to the infirmary.”

  “It was too late.”

  “And you couldn’t tell the truth—that he’d died of fright, in case your past somehow came out.” Tompson nodded. “So you took him up to the canal and put him in. Burned the coat in case there was any evidence, hairs and suchlike, and then played your part as investigator of the tragedy, finding a convenient scapegoat in the Polish man. That didn’t stick. But so what? After all, who’d suspect you of all people?”

  Tompson was nodding in agreement with McAllister’s account, completely oblivious to the awfulness of it all. When the journalist stopped speaking, he, head down, gave a half glance toward McAllister to see if he had finished, to know if it was over.

  McAllister finished his cigarette and sat still, staring into the overhead canopy of shaking skeleton branches outlined against the stars. He let the story settle. He was good at pauses. Then Tompson in his certainty, in his arrogance, once more misjudged the man beside him and allowed a small almost imperceptible sigh to escape. In unison, the leather of the car seat gave out a soft breath as the man let his bones relax.

  That did it. When he was certain nothing more would be said, nothing added, no excuses, no sympathy expressed, no regrets, nothing, McAllister decided. Neither raising his voice, nor allowing emotion to color his words, holding tightly to the steering wheel to keep his hands from grasping, hitting, strangling, he began, telling it as though he was discussing an abstract puzzle that had nothing to do with the actual, physical abuse and the death of a wee boy.

  “No, Tompson. That is not what happened. You couldn’t call for an ambulance, could you? You knew there was physical evidence of what you had done to the boy; you knew he might tell, no matter how much you scared him. You couldn’t risk that, so you killed wee Jamie. Then you concocted a story for Father Morrison. But that only worked so far. When the priest realized that you were back to your old perverted ways, and that you had killed the boy, he refused to help. He had come to the Highlands to put the past behind him. He was trying to atone for his sins. Maybe he swallowed your tale that the death was an accident. More likely he knew the truth but chose to believe you in order to protect the Church. He wouldn’t report you, but neither would he cover up for you. And he couldn’t continue to live here knowing what he did about you, so he left.”