The Second Strain

by John Burke

  ‘She was . . . well, I’d known her a long time. Her husband was a mate of mine. Worked together for the same firm. They were good to me after my father died. Sunday dinner, evenings out together, that sort of thing. You know how it is.’

  ‘Pathetic! And what happened to this husband of hers? Don’t tell me you killed him in a jealous rage?’

  ‘He died in an accident.’

  No point in going through all the details. It was all something Deirdre wouldn’t be able to grasp. The inevitability of it all. No way of getting out of it, and no real compulsion to do so.

  George had been the driver of the store’s delivery lorry, fitted out and padded for the transport of grand pianos, uprights, and the occasional harp or electronic keyboard. He had been crushed to death when a youngster on work experience had slipped while they were manoeuvring a grand piano up an awkwardly sloping driveway. The company turned out to be inadequately insured, and argued every inch of the way over the young widow’s compensation. They were not best pleased with Adam when, as family friend, he stood by her and found a useful legal contact for her. Her parents were relieved: they didn’t have a clue about such matters, and in any case were more devoted to their younger daughter, who had lived up to expectations by producing a grandson. It suited them even better when Adam drifted into marriage with Nora. That was how it had been: drifting with the current until it was too late to strike out for the safety of the bank.

  The store management were even less pleased with the marriage. Adam Lowther was too good a worker to be fired, but from then on the atmosphere was never pleasant. When he saw an advertisement in a trade paper for the sale of premises in Kilstane, he knew it was time to go back home.

  If Nora agreed.

  He dreaded the idea of her refusing. But that wasn’t her way. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said.

  ‘Look, if you don’t fancy the idea . . .’

  ‘No, if that’s what you want.’

  That was how she always spoke when she didn’t really fancy an idea but wasn’t going to be difficult. She was never openly reproachful, preferring to give way with a wan grace.

  And she never reproached him about her miscarriage three months after their move to Kilstane, when she was told she could never have another child. She never so much as hinted that the loss might have been due to the strain of moving to a place where she would always feel a foreigner.

  As if plucking his own thoughts out of the haze, Deirdre said: ‘Nora doesn’t belong here, does she?’

  ‘She’s got plenty of interests.’

  ‘Like hell she has. Adam, for crying out loud’ — she stared desperately around in the gloom of the bar — ‘they’re both out of the way right now. Duncan’s out, your wife’s out to the wide, why don’t we . . . there has to be somewhere we can go. Just for a quickie.’

  The street door swung open.

  ‘Oh, Mr Lowther. There you are.’ It was Neil Galbraith, who ran the local printers and stationers in Union Street. ‘Been looking all over for you. Can I be going ahead with printing those final detailed programme notes? Time’s getting short.’

  ‘I haven’t seen a proof yet.’

  ‘It’s all laid out in my machine room. If you could just come along, maybe tomorrow, and give it clearance . . .’

  ‘I’ll come now, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt you on a Sunday, Mr Lowther.’

  ‘You’re not interrupting anything.’

  As they went towards the street, Adam caught a harsh whisper from Deirdre. ‘No, that’s true. Not a bloody thing.’

  *

  Maitland had been right. DI Gunn’s appearance on Monday morning at the offices of Blaikie & Lamont was not welcome. Apparently there was no longer either a Mr Blaikie or a Mr Lamont in the land of the living, but a Mr Finlay Sproat took it on himself to tighten his already thin lips and make it clear that the firm was not accustomed to the presence of a police officer on its premises. It would be appreciated if she would be good enough to conclude her business as swiftly as possible, apologize, and make herself scarce.

  Lesley said: ‘If you’d be kind enough to let me have a good look at this supposed Wilkie.’

  ‘We have every reason,’ said Sproat in a tone as reedy and thin as his lips, ‘to suppose that it is a genuine Wilkie. A very fine example of his genre studies.’

  With a bad grace he went through a ritual of unlocking a heavy door at the back of the main office and locking it behind them.

  There were shelves on every wall, bearing a collection of china, gold and silver dishes, candelabra, japanned boxes, jade and marble figurines, and a miscellany of ornaments whose value Lesley recognized at once in spite of so many being appallingly ugly. On an easel in the centre of the room, under the full light of a crystal chandelier, was a large oil painting of a north-east coast family clustered at the head of precipitous steps leading up from the sea, waiting to haul in a fishing boat and help unload the catch.

  Lesley stood contemplating it for a good three or four minutes, aware of Sproat fidgeting behind her, prepared to grab her arm if she dared to lay a finger on the canvas. He was waiting for her verdict; and she was happy to keep him waiting, even though she had no doubts whatsoever. The whole composition was so much in the style of The Penny Wedding.

  At last she said: ‘Of course it’s a David Wilkie.’

  ‘We never had any doubts on that score,’ he said self-righteously.

  ‘What can you tell me about the provenance?’

  ‘One thing we have already made clear, officer, but I suppose I must make it clear again for your benefit. This item came into our hands after a house clearance by a reputable firm from Hawick. We did not check the provenance: we simply do not have time to do that with every item we put up for auction. It is specified in our conditions of sale that we cannot be held responsible for authenticating items put under the hammer.’

  ‘But you must surely have had your suspicions that the appearance of a Wilkie in this condition was a bit too good to be true.’

  ‘We had no reason to suppose any malpractice. But’ — his manner became even more sanctimonious — ‘the moment someone at our preview raised doubts and chose to contact your Arts and Antiques Squad, naturally we agreed to allow your inspection.’

  ‘The firm in Hawick — you’ve spoken to them?’

  ‘Of course. A company of impeccable pedigree. So far as they were concerned, it was a routine house clearance, and they were not professionally competent to assess each item individually. They simply passed on the major pieces to us, as they have frequently done in the past.’

  ‘I think I’d better have a word with them.’

  ‘I imagine they’ll be expecting you.’ He made it sound like a rebuke.

  Lesley took another long look at the painting. The idea of it showing up in a routine house clearance was hard to accept. It must surely at some time have hung in some laird’s family home. But how recently? How many hands might it have passed through before reaching this auction house?

  ‘Is there anything further I can contribute?’ asked Sproat without enthusiasm.

  ‘Perhaps I may come back to you after I’ve tried tracing my way backwards.’

  He was glad to unlock the door and show her out.

  An early lunch wouldn’t be a bad idea. Across the street was the old railway station, so small that it might almost have been part of a narrow-gauge preserved line; but the track bed led to a magnificent viaduct over a curve of river. In one end of the building was the local tourist office; in the other, a small café decorated in the style of an old-fashioned station buffet, with posters and framed timetables on the walls. Typical, thought Lesley. They destroy the line, damage the local economy, then get all nostalgic and do a mock-up of what used to be a living part of the community, plastering every available inch with old photographs of steam engines and trains stuck in snowdrifts.

  As she slid a tray along the rail at the counter, an elder
ly middle-aged woman came alongside her, risking a nervous smile. Lesley smiled back just as uncertainly, then realized that she had seen the woman only a short time ago. She had been behind the desk in the auctioneer’s outer office.

  ‘You’re the detective, miss?’

  ‘I’m a detective, yes.’

  There were three tables free, but when Lesley settled herself at one of them, the other woman edged closer and appeared to be waiting for an invitation to join her. Lesley smiled and nodded, and the woman immediately unloaded her tray, turned to put it on a rack, and seated herself in the chair opposite.

  She glanced out of the window. ‘My dad used to work on the trains, when there were trains here.’ She sighed. ‘Regular services there were, running between here and Kilstane, and over to Peebles. Before they all got shut down. When I was a wee lass, I used to be brought here for a day out when there was a rugger match on.’

  ‘You’re not a native of the town, then?’ Lesley asked politely.

  ‘Och, no. I’m from Kilstane originally. But I married away. I was a McCabe.’ She announced it as something to be proud of. ‘Janet McCabe. Only I’ve been Janet Gillespie for a gey long time.’ She took a mouthful of Scotch pie and kept her eyes on Lesley as she chewed away. She was wearing a drab brown cardigan and faded tartan skirt, and a heavy cairngorm brooch twitched on her sagging left breast with each breath or word. ‘We go back on the bus, now and then. Treats the other way round now I’m grown up, you might say — going back home for a treat.’

  Any idea that Lesley might have had of this woman nipping across the road to whisper some secrets about the Wilkie painting vanished. She simply wanted to gossip about her birthplace, as if it were miles away in space and time.

  ‘Aye,’ said Mrs Gillespie, ‘I’ve always insisted my man takes me back when there’s something important on.’ There was a provocative glint in her eyes as she added: ‘We saw you there a few years back, during that Common Riding when everything went wrong.’

  Lesley tried to smile while her mouth coped with a forkful of ham omelette, and managed a throttled ‘Mm’.

  ‘And noo there’s this business o’ somebody’s body being found in the old Academy. Who’d ever have thought it? I went to the Academy myself, when it was the Academy. When Mr Erskine was in charge.’ Mrs Gillespie rarely had a captive audience for her reminiscences, and was making the most of it. ‘Though even then there were some tearaways. Including his own son.’

  ‘Daniel Erskine?’

  ‘Aye. Him and that mad foreign pal of his. Even in their teens, there was no holding those two.’ She was almost smirking at some outrageous memory. Unexpectedly, for a woman so homespun and faded, she blurted out: ‘Didnae have much in the way of gang rape in those days, but those two put the fear of God into the town.’

  Fear . . . or shameful delight?

  ‘The foreign friend,’ Lesley prompted.

  ‘Friends or rivals, you could never be quite sure. Sometimes chasing the same girl, and sometimes . . . well,’ said Mrs Gillespie coyly, ‘sharing them out, you might say. Or fighting over them. Erskine or McCabe, you never knew where you were, because maybe they didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘McCabe? That’s not a foreign name. I thought you said —’

  ‘Och, they all had to take Scottish names.’

  ‘Because their own were unpronounceable in this country?’

  ‘It wasnae that, no. The boy’s father was flying with the Czechs in the RAF. They all had to have English or Scottish names on their documents, so that if they got shot down in enemy territory, or word leaked out about them, any relatives they’d got back home wouldn’t be rounded up. Mind you, it was a bit of a cheek for them to call themselves McCabe. Ian McCabe, the lad was.’

  ‘You don’t know what their real name was?’

  ‘Never did, no.’ Mrs Gillespie looked up at the preserved station clock above the door to the deserted platform, and hurriedly champed on her last mouthful. Obviously her lunch break was limited to half an hour. ‘But the father did get shot down, and quite a while after the war was over young Ian and his mother went back to wherever it was. And you know what happened to Danny Erskine.’ Wistfully she wiped her lips with the paper napkin.

  ‘He became a famous composer.’

  ‘That’s as may be. But he got his hands smashed in, did he not, for letting them stray too often?’

  She pushed back her chair, looked as though she would love to say a few more words, but then glanced again at the clock and scurried for the door.

  Lesley decided to relax over a coffee for a few moments before heading for Hawick and the house clearance firm. She was halfway through the cup when her mobile rang. An elderly man at the other side of the café glared. She huddled closer to the wall, like a woman hiding a shameful secret. Sergeant Elliot’s voice said: ‘Guv, I thought you’d like to know that they’ve got down to our stiff’s right hand.’

  ‘Oh. And . . .?’

  ‘It’s badly smashed. Hard to tell at the moment whether the pressure of the concrete did it, or . . . well, you do begin to wonder, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lesley. ‘Yes, you do indeed.’

  Chapter Eight

  The sound of pipes from beyond the children’s playground suggested that someone had been sent out of doors to practise by a wife with a bad headache. Through an open window above the market-place drifted the scraping of someone tuning a violin. And as Nick Torrance walked down the kirk wynd beside the Episcopalian church he could hear a thin but pleasant voice, accompanied by a rather clunking piano, beyond the stained glass of the Sunday School room. The figure in the central panel of the window was, as usual round here, that of St Andrew.

  He realized the singer must be Adam Lowther’s wife. He had met her only a few times, and it had been difficult to make conversation. She was quite pretty in a faded sort of way, too shy to be capable of relaxed conversation. The same could be said of her voice: light and quite engaging, though without any decisive characteristics, it suited very well the plaintive lullaby Beloved Gregor.

  The morning sun slanted down between a jagged fence of chimneypots, striking brightness from the row of Georgian houses in Meikle Yett Street. All of them had contrasting colour washes to relieve the stony austerity of the frontages. The bright yellow of one of them bounced sunlight back, overpowering the terracotta wash and grey architraves of its neighbour. The Tolbooth at the far end, on the corner of the square, retained its untreated stonework, as befitted the grimness of a one-time jail. Above it all, the blue sky promised a gentle shift from late spring into early summer.

  Two familiar voices resounded from the wynd beside the police station.

  ‘They haven’t heard the last of this. Dammit, are they totally ignorant of who I am?’

  ‘Cuthbert, you’re going to be late for your appointment.’

  ‘Can’t be bothered. Trouble with all of ’em nowadays. Simply can’t be bothered. Some vicious little vandal slashes my tyres, and where are they? Where are they?’

  ‘Sitting in their patrol cars by the loch,’ said Mrs Scott-Fraser wearily. ‘But if you don’t —’

  ‘Sitting there,’ Captain Scott-Fraser ranted loudly enough for an echo to bounce back off the wall of the wynd, ‘trying to catch someone doing five miles over the odds. Because it’s more comfy that way. Less effort. But just let them wait for the next Police Committee meeting. Let them just wait.’

  Nick stood well back in the shadow of a close as the Scott-Frasers emerged into the main street. ‘I think they will have to wait, Cuthbert,’ Mrs Scott-Fraser was snapping. ‘And right now —’

  ‘All this talk of zero tolerance. I’ll give them zero bloody tolerance.’

  ‘Have you remembered to ring the insurance company?’

  ‘Sitting there in their cosy patrol cars while the hooligans run riot —’

  ‘You haven’t remembered, have you?’

  They were walking perilously near to Nick. He wasn’t goi
ng to be found cowering out of their way; but he didn’t fancy stepping out and being drawn into conversation — or, rather, into the non-stop ranting which with Scott-Fraser passed for conversation.

  Fortunately Cynthia Scott-Fraser seized her husband’s arm and turned him forcibly round to face in the opposite direction. ‘Cuthbert, you’ve got three minutes to get there for your eye test.’

  ‘I won’t let this rest. I’m not going to —’

  ‘I’ll pick you up outside the opticians at twelve-thirty. You’ve got that, now — twelve-thirty?’

  When he was quite sure their voices had faded away and he was in no danger of having Mrs Scott-Fraser gladly thrusting a spare three-quarters of an hour of her company on him, Nick emerged and headed for the print shop.

  There was no nonsense here about desktop publishing or the suave impersonality of monitor screens and laser printers. The main room was filled with a hot smell and the constant clatter of ageing machinery.

  ‘Mr Lowther asked me to run my eye over that brochure for concerts in the marquee. Apparently he had to add a few paragraphs to balance the final page.’

  ‘That’s right, Sir Nicholas.’ Neil Galbraith cleared a space on a cluttered table, and kept dodging to and fro while Nick checked the final two pages.

  Adam Lowther had certainly made the most of that remaining half page. This year’s Gathering had not yet taken place, and there were still a few imponderables to be faced, but glowing forecasts were set in clear black type about future splendours: a competitive festival to cover an impressive range of proactive disciplines — vocal, instrumental, composition and speech — and specialist classes for Scottish country dancing, folk groups, and Gaelic poetry. And of course the ongoing exploration of the entire Daniel Erskine œuvre.

  Nick marked a couple of literals, and waited for Galbraith to stop pacing around him.

  ‘Before you go, Sir Nicholas, I wonder if you can help me? About a bit of journalism. You know I do some freelance work on the side.’

  Galbraith in fact doubled as reporter for two regional freesheets as well as printing a monthly one for Kilstane, and acted as a stringer for any national newspapers he could persuade to use his local stories. Today he looked very eager indeed.