A Double Death on the Black Isle (31 page)

They settled down with a pot of tea. Rob enjoyed Joanne's small bungalow, with the mismatched furniture and the pots of lush ferns and trailing plants and shelving full of books and annuals and magazines and knitting patterns and boxes overflowing with felt and fabric and rolls of butcher paper. Children's paintings, posters, postcards, and drawings filled one wall.
Opposite hung a variety of mirrors in round, oval, square, or long and narrow frames in gilt or plain or wood or rococo, reflecting the light and the artwork and the greenery, making the room seem twice the size and twice as interesting. The very untidiness felt artistic.

“Next time I'm at Hector's washhouse-cum-studio, I'll ask him for a picture for you,” Rob said. “Some of his work is really interesting.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“Never.” Rob laughed. “Which reminds me . . .” He described Hector's troll dance and was glad to see Joanne laughing.

“Where Fraser died is gloomy, well-hidden, and yet only a short distance as the crow flies from the farmhouse. An ideal place to commit a crime.”

He smiled, but he had been spooked by the Devil's Den and glad of Hector's clowning. “Your turn,” he finished.

“Well,” she started, “I walked in to a discussion between Mrs. Munro and Patricia. When they saw me they immediately went quiet.”

She told him most of what she had found out.

“Remember, not one word to anyone about the uncertainty over the time of death.” Joanne shook her finger at him.

“Scout's honor.” He gave the three-fingered salute. “Interesting that Fraser was alive until early morning.”

“That's still a matter of opinion. But what does it mean exactly?”

“No idea. Could have been the other lads on the farm did for him, could have been anyone, even the tinkers. It's interesting and frustrating—yet another piece of information we can't publish.”

“I think Mrs. Munro is hiding something. She also has this deep vein of forgiveness, and doesn't think the McPhee brothers should be on trial.”

“Great headline that, ‘Mother of Victim Forgives Accused.'”

For once Joanne didn't chide Rob for being flippant—she was getting the hang of the newspaper culture.

He stretched his arms and legs and yawned. “I must be off, all that country air . . . Joanne, I'm glad you decided to stick at the job. You're a good reporter.”

“Early days yet,” she smiled at him, pleased with his praise. “I have no idea what I'm doing a lot of the time. McAllister said he'd teach me.”

“Better watch out. He fancies you.”

“Rob!” She looked away to cover the hot prickly rush of blood to her face.

As he was leaving he asked, “Do you want me to sneak out the back garden? I've left my bike well up the street.”

“I . . .”

“Consider it done.”

As she was locking the doors, something she had never done before the problems with Bill, Joanne felt a sudden sadness.

Yes Rob,
she thought,
I really do want to be a reporter. And I want to be happy. But it's hard when I have to sneak friends out the back door, and I jump at every noise in case it's my husband come to threaten me, or worse.

Cycling to work on Monday morning, Joanne knew she should have spoken to Granny Ross before now, but she'd never found the right moment. The trial was starting soon—that had been her excuse. So today was the day she would preempt her mother-in-law. The thought gave her and her bicycle the wobbles.

A double-decker bus pulled into a stop in front of her. She waited, not wanting to cycle past it only to have the bus overtake
her on the narrow bridge.
This is the exact spot I thought I saw Mrs. Ord Mackenzie's car.

As she reached the
Gazette
building, the smell of acid and ink and newsprint and damp stone walls hit her—as it did every morning.
If I had known when I started what I know now, would I still want this job
, she asked herself as she climbed the stairs.
Yes
,
I need this job if I am to be me.

The reporters' room was empty except for the smell of stale cigarettes and men and the fountain of crumpled copy paper issuing from the top hat. It took Joanne a moment to realize what was missing—the constant ringing of the telephone. Betsy Buchanan was now in charge of the downstairs switchboard.

Joanne was yet to decide which was worse—continually answering the phone or the sound of Betsy's “Hold please, I have a phone call for you, Joanne, oops, sorry, Mrs. Ross.”

Joanne also suspected that not all calls for editorial were getting through, with Betsy making her own decisions as to who was important enough to speak to a journalist, and who was to be dropped into a disconnected netherworld.

She picked up the receiver.

“Good morning, Joanne,” Betsy Buchanan chirped.

“It's Mrs. Ross at work, please.”
Heavens I sound childish
, Joanne thought, “Could I have an outside line, please?”

“Give me the number and I'll connect you.”

“An outside line, thank you, Mrs. Buchanan.”

Joanne was feeling cross by the time she got through to her mother-in-law for the first skirmish in Margaret's battle strategy of “dazzle them till it hurts.”

“Dochfour 251.”

“Hello, it's Joanne.” Her voice sounded unnaturally bright.
Calm down, calm down
, she told herself.

“Is anything wrong?” Mrs. Ross sounded anxious.

“Not at all,” Joanne reassured her. “I'm phoning to say that as Mrs. Munro is staying with you the Wednesday of the trial, the girls will be going to my friend Chiara's.”

There, I've said it.
Joanne was finding it hard to breath. She was phoning her mother-in-law, scared that if she were alone with her, she would say something she would regret. Every time she thought of Bill and his mother scheming to take the children from her, she trembled at the betrayal.

“I see . . .” Mrs. Ross was suspicious, waiting to hear the catch.

“Only for that week, though. The girls love staying over, and they'll really miss their night with you and Granddad.”

“It's no trouble having them,” Mrs. Ross replied, again sounding as though she was waiting for a punchline.

“I'm pleased to hear it.”
This is it, tell her. Now.
“In fact, just the other night, Wee Jean was saying how you told them they could always live with you and Granddad if anything should happen to me.” Joanne ignored the stifled noise at the end of the line. “It's
so
good of you to think of that. Very reassuring for me . . . and for the girls . . . to know you and Granddad are there.”

Joanne managed a laugh, which she was certain sounded completely false. “I'd better watch myself crossing the bridge on my bike. Don't want anything to happen that might put me in hospital again. Mind you, young girls can be quite a handful, even for fit and healthy grandparents like yourselves.”

“Aye, it would be hard but . . .”

“Anyhow, I must get on with my work. Thanks for the thought about taking care of the girls. We'll talk later about the trial, maybe go together to show cousin Agnes our support.”
Stop
blethering Joanne,
she told herself. “Cheerio Mum. See you soon. Thanks again.”

Joanne barely heard the “cheerio” returned.

As she was about to put down the phone there was a click on the line, but Joanne was so relieved the call was over to give it much attention.

Next,
Joanne thought,
I will have to tell her that I've arranged for the girls to go to Chiara's house on weekdays after school. But that will mean one less accusation of neglect Bill can throw at me. And the girls will love it.

J
immy McPhee was sitting in a bar, thinking deeply, drinking moderately—for him.

“Can anyone join the party or are you waiting to be turned into a pumpkin. Or, in your case, a turnip?” Rob had been standing unnoticed at the end of the table.

“You do come up with a load of shite sometimes.”

He and Jimmy grinned at each other. Rob took a seat.

The corner was dim. The early summer sun attempted to penetrate a window opaque grey with grime. The bar was part of an old inn on the north road, part of the town's history. Frequented now by railway men and bus drivers, in its day it was a resting place for coachmen, and drovers in for the cattle auctions. It was said to be haunted—perhaps by a clansman fleeing Culloden—if he had had the time to stop for a drink. More likely the ghost was a customer unhappy with the beer, coming back to haunt the landlord.

“Since I'm staying on the
Gazette
, leaving my break for the south another couple of years, I want this to be a good story,” Rob told Jimmy.

“Wise move, staying for a whiley more.”

“You think so?” He was pleased to have Jimmy's opinion. He was also one of the few who understood that beneath the rough, menacing exterior there lay a very rough, menacing interior. But intelligence with it.

“Aye. You know what they say about big fishes and small lochs. I suppose you're wanting information?”

“I want an idea of this trial before it begins.”

“In that case mine's a double Glenfarclas.”

I'll never get this past Mrs. Smart,
Rob thought,
this time McAllister will have to sign the expenses chit.

The drinks arrived. They settled down to talk. It was not so much an interview, more a think-aloud session.

“Remember, for your ears only.”

“I'm too scared of you to break my word,” Rob told him.

“As it should be.”

“If Fraser didn't die until dawn, he must have lain by the roadside all night,” Rob started the discussion.

“Maybe. He should have sobered up by the early hours, though. Lying on that road by the Devil's Den all night doesn't seem right. Maybe he had a carry-out.”

Rob looked at him, waiting. Jimmy was picturing the geography of the farm.

“If you cut over the field a wee bit farther on, there's a great big shed where the tractors, the combine harvester, the Land Rover, all the farm equipment is kept. There's also plenty o' straw bales to make a good bed. So I was thinking, he might go there to sleep it off.”

Rob made a note. “Has anyone checked it?”

“Aye, the polis searched the farm buildings and found no sign o' him.”

“So?” Rob couldn't follow Jimmy's thinking.

“If he could have, he'd've gone there, I hear he'd done that before. So maybe something else happened to stop him.”

“Do you think he got into a fight with the farm lads?”

“Maybe. Fraser had a right nasty way o' getting under yer
skin. He was always calling them a bunch o' big lassies who'd never traveled far from the farm and never would. Maybe no a fight, maybe a wee set-to, same as my brothers had.”

Jimmy paused to take a sip of the excellent whisky.

“Another thing,” he continued after smacking his lips in loud appreciation, “Fraser's wee brother. No one has said one word about him in all this. But he was around that night. He hated his big brother for the way Fraser disrespected their da.

“Then there wis the dogs—they barely barked when the farm lads returned, just a wee welcome yelp or two. But I heard that just before dawn, something spooked them. They was barking enough to set the dogs in the big hoose off as well.”

“How do you know all this?” Rob was fascinated. Jimmy McPhee was very well informed.

“It's been common knowledge this past year that Fraser had gone too far wi' that tongue o' his. His fists too. Don't forget, we Traveling folk work on most o' the farms hereabouts. More and more o' our cousins have left life on the road and settled. You canny have a pish in the burn without us knowing.”

Rob knew this to be true. The old way of life of the Traveling people was coming to an end, sometimes forcibly. He thought it a pity, but not many would agree with him.

“Anything else? Anything more solid?” Rob was fascinated by the speculation, but he couldn't see how any of it would help Jimmy's brothers.

“Sinclair has this idea that there was some injuries that didn't come from a kicking from lads wearing wellies,” Jimmy told him.

“He can prove this?”

“Maybe, but no for sure. Whoever kicked him or hit him must have been in a right rage.”

“The trouble is,” Rob pointed out, “the procurator fiscal doesn't have to prove your brothers killed him, or that they had
any intension of killing him. For involuntary manslaughter, all that needs to be proven is that the injuries received outside the hotel led to his death.”

“I know. And the eejits have admitted the fight . . . no, no a
fight
, a
scuffle
, wi' Fraser.”