by A. D. Scott
“Yes,” the headmaster told the police officers. “Nurse Urquhart was expected; she was halfway through her annual health inspection—weighing the children, measuring their heights, checking up on their well-being.” He held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. Attacking a woman with acid was beyond his comprehension.
• • •
“Hiya, Frankie,” Rob answered, receiver under his chin hands, still typing when Joanne had passed over the receiver. “I wrote up the jazz club but . . . What? When? Where are you now? I’ll be right over.” He flung the receiver back in the cradle, snatched his jacket, saw his colleagues staring at him. “Someone threw acid at Nurse Urquhart. She’s in Raigmore Hospital.” He was out the door, shouting over his shoulder, “It’s serious.”
“Acid?” Joanne asked.
“Here?” Don said.
“Horrible stuff.” McAllister shuddered.
“It’s no’ my fault,” Hector wailed.
“I’ll call the police station,” McAllister told them, and went into his office.
“God love us, thon’s a nasty, nasty thing to do to anyone.” Don let out a long sigh. “And her such a nice wifie.”
“Is it to do with the shinty?” Hector asked. Nurse Urquhart had made it plain to him that his photographs and his “interfering” were very unwelcome. Even though the story of a severed foot was of huge interest in the community, she told Hector she did not thank him for broadcasting the event. That had been three weeks ago; he thought it was over and done with.
“I use acid sometimes. Even a wee drop burns right through your clothes,” Hec informed them.
“You have acid?” Don asked.
“Aye, in the studio. I use it for . . .”
“And your so-called studio is next door to the Urquharts’?”
“Next door but one.”
“I’d no’ be telling anyone that in a hurry,” Don told him.
Joanne got it first.
It took longer for Hector to get the implication. “I’d never . . . never ever . . .”
“We know,” Joanne said.
“Have you checked the bottle is there?” Don asked.
“I’ll go now . . .”
“Better not. Wait until someone can go with you. We don’t want . . .”
“What?” McAllister came into the room.
“Hector keeps acid in his shed,” Joanne said.
“Ma studio,” Hector corrected her.
“And he’s next door but one to the Urquharts’, ” Joanne continued. And they’ve had a falling-out, she didn’t say.
“Joanne, go with Hec. Check on it. Take my car.” He threw the keys across the table. “I’ve been told it’s touch and go on Nurse Urquhart’s life, so . . .”
“We’ll be back as soon as we can.” She nodded at McAllister. They knew the implications. But Hector didn’t. Joanne took the keys and Hector’s hand and left.
“Nasty business, acid,” Don commented when they were alone. “And there’s plenty o’ it in this building too. The printers keep some for cleaning the plates.” Shaking his head at the savagery of human nature, he spread a new sheet of paper on the desk. He reached for the em ruler and began to draw up the columns. “I’ll make up a new front page.”
McAllister nodded back. It was not that they were callous. Only realistic. This was front-page news.
• • •
That evening Joanne was serving up toad-in-the-hole, the girls’ favorite dish, although she suspected Annie loved it for the name as much as the taste.
“Someone was horrible to the Nit Nurse,” Jean, her younger daughter, announced.
“We had special assembly,” Annie, at eleven, two and a half years older than her sister, continued. “We have to tell our teacher if we saw anyone hurting the nurse.”
“Did you see anyone?” Joanne asked.
“We can’t see out our classroom windows,” Jean said.
Good. No need for them to know the horrors of the world, Joanne thought.
“Even though she’s a real nosy parker, no one hates her,” Annie said. “She gives you a sweetie after the doctor gives you a jab.”
“An injection,” Joanne automatically corrected her.
She ignored her daughter’s comments about Nurse Urquhart’s being a nosy parker but was disturbed nonetheless at how observant—beyond her years—her elder daughter was. Surely it’s not right she knows these things, Joanne thought when Annie commented on the world with an adult perspective. But Joanne excused her, always, knowing that the habit of listening in to adult conversations was a habit the child had developed over years of trying to gauge the danger, trying to preempt her father, hoping to protect her mother against the worst of her husband’s violence.
“Let’s hope Nurse Urquhart gets better soon.” Joanne changed the subject; the attack distressed her. “There’s custard with Granny’s strawberry jam for pudding . . . who wants some?”
The offer did indeed end the conversation, but not Joanne’s thoughts; acid aimed at the face—that had been the consensus in the newsroom—images of burnt flesh kept popping up, making her shudder.
• • •
“Rob, can we meet up in the dinner break?”
It was Frankie calling from work—a practice frowned on except for emergencies. But his boss allowed that Frankie’s mother’s situation was indeed an emergency.
This time they met in the bar on Baron Taylor’s Lane. Both ordered no more than half a pint of beer.
“They’re taking my mother to Aberdeen; she needs a special operation on her throat. They can’t do it here.”
Rob didn’t know what to say; the longer Nurse Urquhart stayed alive, the better. But alive to recover to what?
“The police keep asking if she had any enemies. They keep asking Dad about the shinty team. Stands to reason after the leg and all that, but I don’t see it . . .” Frankie stubbed out his third cigarette in fifteen minutes.
“Did you mention the time she was knocked off the bike?”
“I’d forgotten that. I suppose I’d better tell the polis.” Here he paused. “I’ve no idea who would want to hurt her, so . . . So I looked for her handbag, but the police have it. Then I looked in her chest of drawers . . .” This was a huge confession. Boys would no more search through their mother’s handbag or chest of drawers than steal the church collection.
“Right at the back, I found these.”
Frankie pulled out four envelopes with NURSE URQUHART printed in capital letters on the front. Frankie took out one of the notes, printed in blue ink, from a fountain pen, on lined paper, and showed it to Rob, but half under the table, not wanting to expose the offensive message to a passerby or the light of day.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
NEXT TIME I WILL NOT BE SO FORGIVING.
Rob read it. And whistled.
“The other notes seem from earlier.” Frankie was shuffling the order of the notes, trying to make sense. “There’s no dates, so I don’t know how long this has been going on.”
Rob looked at the envelopes. “No postmark. So how did she get them?”
“I don’t know. I’m handing them in to the police, but first, I thought maybe we could, you know . . . look into it. But I don’t want this in the paper. Not yet.”
“I promise not to write this up unless you or your dad agree, but do you mind if I talk to McAllister? . . . He’s always good with ideas.” Rob stared at the notes again. He thought there was something malicious yet cowardly about anonymous letters. It was the politeness that he found especially creepy.
“All the help I can get . . .” Frankie started. And finished. He was bereft. And helpless. He hated helpless. The notes made him beyond angry. Rob too. And anger helped.
“Let’s go to the Gazette office now. Show them to McAllister. Then you go to the police station.” Rob didn’t need to say that the police station was only a short walk from the Gazette building, and no one need know that Frankie had shown the notes to Rob
and McAllister.
• • •
“McAllister, this is my friend Frankie Urquhart. His mother is . . .”
McAllister stood, held out his hand. “I’m really sorry about your mother.”
“Thanks.” It was all Frankie could manage. Without being asked, he sat in one of the visitors’ chairs, leaned forwards, put the three anonymous letters bundled together with an elastic band on McAllister’s desk, then lit a cigarette.
McAllister raised his eyebrows at Rob.
“Frankie found these letters . . .”
“This morning.” Frankie was leaning back, blowing smoke upward, doing all he could not to see the offensive notes. “You can read them.”
McAllister took off the band, laid them in a row, opened them, shuffled the notes into what he thought might be the sequence.
KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF WHAT DOESN’T CONCERN YOU.
This seemed to be the first note.
I HAVE WARNED YOU ONCE. I WILL NOT WARN YOU TWICE.
Then the third note.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. NEXT TIME I WILL NOT BE SO FORGIVING.
The final note gave the impression of regret.
WHY DID YOU NOT HEED MY WARNING?
NOW I WILL HAVE TO ACT AGAIN.
IT WILL BE MORE SERIOUS THAN THE LAST TIME.
Rob was leaning over the desk, looking at the notes but not touching them.
“First thoughts?” McAllister asked.
“Old-fashioned English, educated, no spelling mistakes . . .” Rob was rereading them to himself.
“Fountain pen, neat lettering, paper not unusual but not cheap,” McAllister continued.
“A woman.”
Rob and McAllister looked at Frankie. He had said this louder than he meant to. They both nodded, but McAllister asked, “What makes you think that?”
“Dunno. Maybe the way she put it—polite like. Maybe the way she formed the letters—they’re too neat for a man. Maybe it’s just the feeling I get . . .” His voice faded away.
McAllister and Rob felt for Frankie, saw how he was struggling to hold himself together, how the bright, cheerful Frankie that Rob knew and McAllister deduced from the smart suit, the good haircut, the polished shoes, was also fading.
“Rob, make a copy of the letters. Use the typewriter in here—it’s more private. Then Frankie can give the originals to the police. Frankie, keep in touch through Rob. We can meet anytime you want to talk. And we will do all we can to help.”
The decisive way McAllister rattled out orders helped. Frankie stood, thanked him.
McAllister stood and shook Frankie’s hand. “Give your father my best.”
“Thanks, boss.” Rob spoke quietly for both of them, grateful and relieved that McAllister was involved.
McAllister saw that Rob had automatically run in three or four sheets of paper, separated by carbon paper. “Show a copy to Don. Ask his opinion.” He was hoping Don the oracle might find some clue in the words.
He took his hat, walked out into a wind that could cut through steel, regretted he’d left his coat at home, and marched up the street to Boots the Chemist, making straight for the stationery department.
Basildon Bond was the label on the writing pads. Matching envelopes were next to them. Parker pens, bottles of blue ink, and black, were on the next shelf.
“Sell many of these?” McAllister asked the woman behind the counter, who was standing, looking bored, and welcomed a chance of a conversation.
“Loads,” she said. “Our best line.”
“These pens?”
“Aye, they don’t sell as well as the new biros, but they sell. Especially after the eleven plus results come out, or when school starts, or after the Highers’ results, or for birthdays . . . grannies are always after buying them for birthdays.”
“So, mostly sold for high school students.” It wasn’t a question, more an affirmation, but the woman started off again.
“Aye. Sometimes people buy them for themselves, but . . .”
“Women?”
“Mostly. Men buy black ink and . . .”
It took her a moment to register that McAllister had doffed his hat, muttered thanks, and was walking towards the stairs, leaving her still talking.
A woman, he was thinking as he walked back to the office, would a woman do this? He remembered the acid had caught Nurse Urquhart on the throat. I wonder how tall she is, was his next thought. Maybe the attacker was shorter and missed the face? The very idea of throwing acid was abhorrent—an act of desperation—or revenge. Whatever the motive, it was an act of hate. And hate kills.
SIX
Joanne was fascinated by Mae Bell, a woman whom she hardly knew, but an exotic creature in these parts. Mae represented everything Joanne wanted to be—confident, elegant, well-traveled, mysterious. She wanted to keep Mae Bell to herself, but also wanted to show off her fascinating new friend.
Chiara and her father, Gino Corelli, were outsiders, people of the world—coming to this distant highland town from war-ravaged Italy, meeting up when the war was over, and Gino Corelli, released from a prisoner of war camp in northern Scotland, had made the decision to stay. They have no coffee or ice cream, was Gino’s simple explanation for the decision. That there was nothing left for him in his birthplace was the real reason; wife killed, home and orchards and olive groves and small café burned to the ground—that was the real reason. That and a chance to make a better life.
Make a better life he did; a new café, an ice cream business, and a fish-and-chips shop were all achieved in the first seven years. His daughter’s marrying another émigré, a Polish nobleman who had fled with his air force unit to Scotland, delighted him. The recent birth of his first grandson delighted him even more.
Life is good, Gino Corelli said. Often.
Joanne hoped her friends would find Mae Bell as fascinating as she did, and when Mae Bell said she wanted to thank Joanne for the article on her husband, she agreed to meet in the café on the river.
“Hello, Mr. Corelli.”
He looked up, saw Joanne, and smiled with his whole body.
“I’d like to introduce my friend Mrs. Mae Bell.” Joanne stood back, gesturing towards Mae as though she were a prize exhibit in an art gallery.
“Mae, please. Hi, Mr. Corelli.”
“Gino. Pleased ta meet you.” Gino beamed. Mae Bell smiled back, and they both instantly knew they would be friends.
Joanne took her favorite seat by the window with a view over the river and castle and the intersection where traffic slowed down to pass through the narrow stone archways of the suspension bridge.
Joanne asked for a cappuccino, Mae Bell an espresso. Gino himself brought over the order. “I’ll leave you lovely ladies to chat,” he told them. “An’ I hope you stay a long time, Mrs. Mae.”
Chiara had mentioned Joanne’s friend to her family, and although curious, Gino would not dream of intruding—but he knew a refugee when he saw one.
“So, anything further on finding friends of your late husband?” Joanne asked.
“No. But thanks for the story in the Gazette. It seems to have done the trick.” She laid out another envelope. Took out another sheet of the same lined notepaper. Joanne looked at another anonymous message.
“It’s the same writer as the first one,” Mae said.
I HAVE WARNED YOU. NO MORE INTERFERING IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LOSE YOUR LOOKS.
“That’s not nice.” Joanne shivered. “And it must mean the writer knows what you look like.”
“I agree,” Mae said as she exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke. “I’m losing my looks as it is—don’t want to hurry the inevitable.” Her laugh sang out across the café, but an edge to it made Gino look across at the pair.
“You’re not losing . . .” Joanne started, but was interrupted by Rob walking up to the table.
“I saw you through the window. Hello again.” He took a seat without asking, oblivious to the glare from Joanne. “How are you doing? Had any
response to the article about your husband?”
“Only this.” Mae picked up the letter and passed it to Rob.
Joanne was furious. This is my story. But she knew how petty that would sound.
“Bloody hell! Another one.”
Both women stared at him. Gino too. “Language, ma boy, there’s ladies here.”
“Sorry, Mr. Corelli. Sorry, Mae, Joanne.”
Joanne shrugged but had caught the use of Mrs. Mae Bell’s first name.
“What do you mean?” Mae was watching him, “Another one?”
“I . . .” Rob stopped, unsure if he should explain. “I think we should show this to McAllister.” He stood. “Meet you at the office,” he called out as he left.
The two women nodded back and, not saying much, not looking at the river and the cold clear rare sunshine reflecting off the water, the castle, the distant hills of the Black Isle, they walked across the bridge, up the steep street, on to the Gazette building, not conversing but not uncomfortable, both considering the contents of the letters, both curious as to the writer, and Mae Bell, more than Joanne, worried in a What? Me? Worried? way.
Joanne took them straight up to McAllister’s office. Rob was already there. When she introduced Mae Bell, she was expecting McAllister to be entranced by the visitor and was not disappointed. Mae Bell sat on the chair and crossed her legs, her nylons making that shimmering sound that normally set Rob a-fantasizing, but this time he managed to ignore.
“Mrs. Bell had a response to her advertisement and the article in this week’s paper,” was all Joanne said.
Mae Bell laid the envelope on McAllister’s desk. He stared at it. Poked it with his pen. Then opened it and read. “Is this the first note?” It was obvious from the wording that it was not the first warning.
“The second. I tore up the first. Never pay attention to anonymous letters,” Mae said. “It only encourages them.”
“I’m not sure how much I should tell you,” McAllister began, “but this has to go to the police.”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
Mae Bell did not look nervous. Joanne doubted anything could make her nervous.
