by A. D. Scott
Not loud enough, Mae thought. “Let’s try singing,” she said. She couldn’t find the breath to sing. Nor to call out. And Joanne had even less breath. Mae felt her pulse for the eleventh time that day. Still there. Faint and slow. She had no idea what was normal, just that the pulse was harder and harder to find, Joanne’s short bursts of semi-lucidity shorter and fewer.
In the morning, Mae vowed, I’ll beat the shit out of that bitch. I don’t care if she throws the acid; anything is better than this. She felt better. She had her courage back. She dozed. She plotted and planned exactly how she would grab Moira, how she would hit her, kick her, shove the bucket, any bucket, in her face.
Then she remembered how once, in Paris, she had seen this woman’s arms—the skin wrinkled and puckered, red and blue ridges standing out like roads on a map, the hands twisted, fingers missing; the damage was hideous, and the pain evident in every movement. An accident when she worked in a factory making batteries, a neighbor had explained.
How much worse will it be on the face, in your eyes? Her breathing was rapid again, her legs and arms twitching.
Charlie gripped Mae’s hand, singing a pitch-perfect version: Stormy weather, stormy weather, keeps raining all the time, the ti-u-mmm.
The lock was being opened. I’ll get her this time. Mae tried to sit up, tried to kneel. Her whole body was shaking. Her head spinning.
“Charlie?” it was a whisper. “Charlie, are you all right?”
“Reeen.”
“Charlie.”
“Maureen, you have to help us,” Mae whispered. “Annie’s mum needs a doctor, she’s really sick, she might . . .”
“Reen, Charlie wants to play. Charlie disnae like dark.”
“Maureen? Where are you? Maureen?” The shriek was coming from the kitchen.
“Coming, Mum.” The girl stepped back and began to close the padlock. “I’ll be back, Charlie. Promise.”
• • •
Deadline day over with, McAllister drove home. He thanked Mrs. Ross Senior for being there in case Joanne should turn up. There was no need to ask if she had turned up, or telephoned; the look and the slight shake of the head from Joanne’s mother-in-law said it all.
It was now three and a half days since Joanne’s disappearance. The Highland Gazette ran with the front-page headline they all had hoped never to publish: MISSING.
Don arrived an hour an a half later, having watched the first newspapers roll off the presses. “Someone will see the paper tomorrow, and call us with information,” he said. Don had said the same thing to the compositors and printers. They had nodded before turning away, not looking at each other, not wanting to say otherwise, but thinking, Three and a half days.
Rob arrived two minutes later with fish-and-chips. McAllister was pointing out that Mrs. Ross Senior had left enough food for an army when the sound of the front door opening then slamming made him look up, his eyes light up, then shut down again.
It was Annie. She was out of breath. She had a stitch in her side from cycling across town, across the river, and up the hill, in the rain, on a bike with no lights because the batteries had run out. She had a cardigan and coat over her pajamas and her school satchel on her back. She went straight to McAllister, who put his hands on her shoulders. She shook him off.
“Granny and Granddad think I’m in bed,” she started. She took off her schoolbag, opened it, took out a blue Basildon Bond envelope. McAllister stared at it, and couldn’t speak. Annie took out the cardboard-covered book. “It’s Mum’s family allowance book,” she said.
All three men stared at the envelope and the book.
“Where did you get it?” Rob asked.
“It was in my bag when I took out my homework.”
They were all still standing. Rob pulled out a chair for Annie, then for himself, and he and she sat down, Rob deliberately close, arms touching. He had known her since she was eight. He was her babysitter, her confidant, her adoptive uncle, although she thought of him more like a big brother.
“Let’s do detectives. Where was it put in your bag?”
“At school.”
“Do you have an idea who put it there?”
Annie hesitated. She had thought this through. Maureen Forbes had been following her around all day, asking about her mum, asking if she was upset, if Jean was upset, if anyone knew where her mum was.
In class in the late afternoon, much to Annie’s embarrassment, she had started crying. She didn’t know why. Maybe because Maureen was being so nice, asking her how she was so many times.
“I was crying . . .”
Rob knew how much it took for Annie to confess this.
“The teacher took me to the office and gave me an aspirin. My bag was in the classroom. Maybe someone put the envelope in then.” It was the only time she could remember leaving it unattended.
After school, Granddad had been waiting to take her and Jean home. Maureen had come up to her saying, “I hope they find your mum really soon.” Annie thought Maureen was about to say more when Granddad came over with Jean, saying, “Would your friend like to come for an ice cream wi’ us?”
“No thank you, Mr. Ross, my mum will worry if I’m late.” Maureen ran off and Granddad bought the ice cream, much to Jean’s astonishment; ice creams were for Sundays and treats.
Annie knew as soon as she found the envelope with the family allowance book that it was important, but she didn’t want to give it to Granddad, who would give it to the police. She wanted McAllister to have it. Or Rob. They will find Mum.
It was only as she was waiting for Jean to go to sleep, and Granny to put on the wireless, the sound turned up because Granddad was going deaf after years working in the foundry, that she thought of Maureen being so friendly. She waited until Granny came in to say night-night and switch off the light, then she waited more—fifteen minutes—and sneaked out the back door. Granny Ross didn’t know she had a torch.
After explaining everything, Annie looked at Rob and said, “Mr. Forbes who works on the Gazette is Maureen’s dad. I think maybe Maureen Forbes put it in my bag.”
She expected her statement to shock them. Instead she saw McAllister look at Mr. McLeod, and Rob look up at both of them. Then they all sat around the kitchen, planning what to do. Annie stayed with them.
It was Don who remembered to call the Rosses. It was very late for a phone call, and Granny Ross woke Granddad, telling him to answer.
“I’m too old for bad news,” she’d said.
“No, I’m sorry, I’ve no news about Joanne,” Don said, then told Mr. Ross about Annie, reassuring him the girl was fine. Hearing Granny Ross insisting on coming to fetch her, Don said, “She’s asleep, let’s leave her here.” He knew there would be no way Annie would go home until Joanne was found.
He came back to hear McAllister and Rob discussing the options.
“No, I’m not going to the police,” McAllister said.
“So what do we do?” Rob was holding the book, examining it as though it was a passport to parts unknown.
“We . . .” McAllister looked across at Annie. Saw her face was alabaster white except for dark shadows under the eyes. This is not right that a child . . . .
Don interrupted the thought. “Annie, can you help me?” He too wanted her out of the discussions.
She came with him, knowing full well he did not want her to hear what McAllister and Rob were discussing.
“I need to make up a bed on the couch in the sitting room.” He was pretending it was for him, but was hoping Annie would sleep whilst they sat out the seconds and minutes and hours, believing that whatever happened, the child had a right to be there.
If she’s alive, the girl needs to know right away, Don decided. And if she isn’t . . . that he couldn’t bear to think about.
• • •
Rob had on dark trousers. He borrowed one of McAllister’s numerous black jumpers. He had a black balaclava. He put a tire iron, a torch, and a ferocious flick-knife McAlliste
r had acquired who knew where, probably Glasgow, into a haversack. He also took a small kindling axe—blunt—the only semi-lethal implement in the house.
McAllister too was in black, but that was his usual clothing. He packed a first aid kit, left by Mrs. Ross, just in case, she’d said, into the glove compartment along with a flask of whisky. He threw blankets and a pillow into the rear seat. He had a torch, a kitchen knife, and a length of washing line.
“Never know if we might need to tie someone up,” he told Rob. He also put in two empty whisky bottles—a broken bottle being a Glaswegian’s chief weapon of choice.
They raced across the river and into the road leading to Mal Forbes’s house. McAllister parked close, but not too close. They got out. The house was in a gap between streetlights. McAllister nudged Rob and pointed out the high fence at the side. They went back to the car.
“The fence is new,” McAllister said. “It encloses the back garden. There’s a gate on the north side, but it’s padlocked.”
“I can climb the gean tree then drop down the other side,” Rob decided, “I’ll try and open the gate, but if not . . .” I’ll do this alone he was thinking. “But it would be better if there were two of us.”
“I’ll climb if I have to,” McAllister said.
He waited in the shadows, watching Rob climb then disappear. The rain had lessened, turning to a thick, penetrating drizzle that made halos around the streetlights. The wind had dropped but still it was a dreich night. He watched the tree, the shadows it sent out, the splats of late blossoms lying at the base of the trunk, slippery, smelly, dead. He heard the seashore sound of the next-door neighbors’ larch, hoping it would disguise any noise Rob might make.
He waited. He was desperate for a cigarette and daren’t light up. He waited four minutes and it seemed like a life sentence. He started to creep towards the side gate of the mercifully dark house.
The snap of metal, the clatter as the lock hit the ground was loud and sharp and terrifying. A light came on in the house. Rob was yelling, “McAllister, McAllister get over here.” McAllister had no idea how, but he tackled the gate, bashing at it, kicking it—useless. There must be a second padlock.
He heard shouting. He stepped back, took a run. Managed to catch the top of the gate and swung himself up and over. As he landed, he felt something give in his ankle. He swore but kept running.
There were two torches shining at each other as Rob and Mal stood in a standoff. A wailing—like a banshee—unearthly, high-pitched, rising and falling, came from the outbuilding.
Then a voice, faint, but unmistakable.
“Help. Help us.” Then a fit of perhaps coughing, choking, as the voice gathered the effort to call out again. “Maureen? McAllister? Police?”
“Mae Bell, hold on!” Rob kicked at the window covering, the metal sheet he had been trying to remove when Mal had come out to see what the noise was.
“Mae,” Rob was yelling when he made it into the shelter, his torch shining around the room. “Where are you?”
McAllister now had his torch on Mal Forbes. And Mal was not moving. He was standing, in his pajamas, head down. Weeping. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Moira never meant to harm them.”
Rob found the door. The cupboard had not been put back properly. “McAllister, get in here. Come on, man, help me.”
The cupboard moved easily, but the door was padlocked. Rob found a spade leaning in a corner with other garden implements. He lifted it up and was hammering at the lock. The wood gave, not the lock.
When the door opened, the stench made them choke. McAllister was shining his torch inside. He saw the huddled bodies, saw a picture akin to the pictures of survivors of Bergen-Belsen.
“She’s alive,” said a creature he knew was Mae Bell—from the accent only. “Get us out. Joanne needs a doctor. Get us out. Need help . . . Joanne.”
McAllister was kneeling. Feeling in the dark for Joanne. He touched the child he had caught a glimpse of in the torchlight.
Joanne was silent. Not moving.
Mae was crooning, “Hush, Charlie, hush.”
The boy was moaning, “Maureeen, Reen.”
The sound of a fire engine bell was coming nearer.
McAllister was on the floor, touching Joanne’s hair, holding her hand. “I’m here, my love. I’m here, bonnie lass.”
Rob was standing in the doorway, about to lift Mae Bell out. He never knew what came first, the shriek from the boy or the shriek as Moira Forbes came running at him from the far end of the shelter.
He shone his torch. Saw the bottle in her hand. He grabbed the spade, dropping the torch. He lashed out into the dark, catching Moira Forbes on the neck.
He felt the spurt of blood shower his hands and face. He dropped the spade.
McAllister shone his torch towards them. Rob was standing over the small creature spread-eagled on her back at his feet. They both saw her nightdress, already crimson with blood, so much blood it was pooling around her shoulders. McAllister saw the head at a sharp angle, barely connected to her neck. He flashed the torch upwards. But not before Rob had seen what he had done.
The men from the fire brigade came running into the garden—Maureen Forbes was awake, hiding in her room after letting them in when they started to batter the door with an axe.
She said, “Out the back,” and two giants dressed in shiny uniforms and shiny hats and shiny boots yelled Thanks and ran past her.
She scuttled back to her room and shut the door and tried to disappear under the eiderdown, shaking and sobbing, terrified. It’s all my fault.
Two uniformed policemen came a minute later and ran in through the open door and out towards the commotion in the garden. The young constable shone his torch on the scene and ran into the garden to be sick. The older man, Sergeant Patience, held his arm so tightly, tears came to the constable’s eyes. “Get a grip, boy, there’s work to be done.”
An ambulance arrived next. The men needed the firemen to help carry two stretchers. McAllister went to hospital to be with the women.
Sergeant Patience asked Rob to hold the kicking, screaming boy whilst the medical man gave him an injection. He knew he terrified children—and adults. The sedative took effect quickly—“He’s just a wee bag o’ bones,” the ambulance man said, “better bring him to hospital an’ all.”
Rob and the policeman were too shocked to comment on the boy’s appearance.
DI Dunne arrived with WPC McPherson. She said she would take the boy to hospital, as Rob refused to move. He was sitting on the grass in the corner farthest from the shelter, saying nothing except, “I’m fine. Just need to catch my breath. I’m fine.” The policewoman knew the Scottish meaning; knew that for anything from a scratch to every bone in the body broken, a Scotsman would say, “Fine.”
DI Dunne took Mal Forbes into the house. It was Ann McPherson who asked where Maureen was, and found the girl. By then Maureen was mute.
“She needs a doctor too,” the policewoman said, knowing she would need more than that. Her mother was dead. Her father under arrest. She was stupefied with shock.
Rob came into the house. He was trying to speak coherently, trying to give a statement through the stench of imprisonment and the metallic taste of blood, and the terror invading his nostrils, clinging to his hair. The damp trousers, the jumper wet through, even though it was not raining, he had not noticed. Not yet.
He had stepped in the blood of Moira Forbes. A footprint from his right boot left three full prints across the kitchen floor. WPC McPherson saw him looking, trying to work out the source and, taking his arm, she moved them into the sitting room, not caring what happened to Moira’s immaculate carpet.
Without her superior’s approval, Ann McPherson called Margaret McLean, saying little except the address and “Rob needs you.”
Next the policewoman rang Don McLeod. It was he who had summoned help; the fire brigade first, as he knew there would be no arguments if he said there was a blaze. The ambulance next
. They didn’t ask either. The third and last time Don had dialed 999, he’d asked for the police, saying he was a neighbor. “There’s burglars in the house next door,” he said, and hung up after giving the address but not his name.
When WPC McPherson rang McAllister’s house and spoke to Don, the conversation was brief. But Annie had heard the ring.
“Your mum’s alive and in the hospital, but she’s weak.” Don told her. “They found Mae Bell with her.” He knew how serious it was. As did she. He did not lie. He did not say her mother would be fine. And she was glad Mr. McLeod did not pretend.
“We’ll visit in the morning,” Annie said. “So we’d better get some sleep. Night-night, Mr. McLeod.”
He reached out and lightly touched her head. “Night-night, sleep tight.”
She smiled. It was what her mum always said.
And the wise wee girl, in her stripy pajamas, her hair mussed up, dark rings under her eyes, climbed the stairs to the room she usually shared with her sister and went to bed, by herself, leaving the sofa to Mr. McLeod, who was finding it hard not to weep.
Margaret McLean told DI Dunne he could speak to her son in the morning. He dared not object. She took Rob home. She ran a bath for him, made him a hot toddy, put him to bed like he was still her wee boy, which he still was, even at twenty-three. She sat in the chair of his room saying nothing very much, watching and waiting until he fell asleep. She watched and waited some more, holding his hand when he called out, smoothing his hair as he cried. She watched the night turn to day and did not leave him, her boy, her son, her only child.
Only as the rooks in the trees outside began their early-morning bickering and she saw Rob turn over and this time sleep, truly sleep, did she leave him. But she left his door open, in case he should need his mother.
TWENTY-FOUR
McAllister stayed at the hospital all night and most of the next day. It was forbidden for visitors to sleep in the corridors, the waiting rooms, anywhere in the hospital. So he paced. Like Banquo’s ghost he haunted the place, scaring at least one junior nurse with his chalk-white face, dark unshaven chin, and hair askew from constantly tugging at it.
