A Small Death in the Great Glen (24 page)

“Mrs. Ross has gumption,” Mr. Clark continued. “The job at the
Gazette,
I get the feeling that gives her the lifeline she needs.”

McAllister had the feeling the conversation was at cross-purposes.

“Do you think her children know what happened?” He brought the conversation back to the point of his visit.

“No. But with children, they may not talk directly, but read their stories, look at their paintings, you soon see if there are problems, fears. In wartime, children draw planes dropping bombs, soldiers, guns, blood, all the usual catastrophes. Normally, in a town like this, they paint their family, nice houses with flowers, cats and dogs, blue skies with a big sun. Lucky them. But some show a darker element. Dark skies, rivers colored red, fire, and people standing apart, no hands joined like in most family portraits. I'm no psychologist but even I can see the effect that violence in a family can have on children. The girls walked home with Jamie, he disappears, and because they are already disturbed, they make up an explanation.”

“And what's that?”

“That he, Jamie, was grabbed by a hoodie crow. It's an explanation for the unexplainable. They can't fathom that he disappeared into thin air, then was found in the canal, where he would never go of his own free will, so they rationalize, fantasize. That's my explanation. But, who knows?” He paused. “Look, I can't
discuss my pupils' family matters, but you know Joanne Ross, you know her situation …”

McAllister was not about to reveal that he had only recently realized something was amiss and had ignored it as not his business.

“. . . all I can say is, I'm used to Annie Ross being a storyteller. Her sister is a timid wee soul, but she too says she saw a hoodie crow. Whether she is following her big sister or not, I don't know. But you know how children are, and I don't know about you southerners, but here in the Highlands the hoodie crow as a metaphor for evil is a common tale.”

“Aye, I've heard something of that.”

“It was, is, a tale used to scare children. Like ghosts and bogies and faeries, our children are brought up with all these nefarious creatures hiding under the bed. For all our television and brave new world, this place still has its Celtic roots. Stories of crows pecking out the eyes of newborn lambs, well, it's not that long ago that this town was fringed with working farms. And then there are all the other superstitions used to scare wee ones—”

“Jamie's parents say he would never go near water.”

“Terrified. He wouldn't even walk across the suspension bridge to swimming lessons. He also had bad asthma, the chlorine at the swimming baths set him off, so he was excused.”

“I'm not trying to do the job of the police but there is something here that feels wrong. Or rather, the arrest of the Polish sailor feels too convenient.”

“I did have some terrible suspicions myself,” Frank Clark confessed. “So I was relieved that the sailor was arrested, relieved that my worst nightmares were unfounded.”

McAllister always found that the best way to elicit a story from those he was interviewing was to say nothing. Or at least look slightly perplexed. The explanation would surely follow.

“I know you know the situation—”

McAllister didn't but he gave a slight nod.

“—and I can trust you to be discreet—”

Another nod.

“—but at the time, well, I thought Annie Ross knew a lot more than she was saying.” He paused, considered whether to continue but knew he must, if he was to get a good night's sleep. This thought had been gnawing away at him, asleep and awake; he needed to talk it through, if only to be laughed at. And he had no fear of McAllister's mockery. He instinctively knew that the man sitting before him would give his fears due consideration and a measured opinion.

“I was terrified Annie Ross might have pushed him into the canal.”

“So you're not one of those who is scared to think the unthinkable.” McAllister posed this less as a question, more as an observation. He too had been so accused. He too had dared to think the unthinkable, to accuse an untouchable.

“Well, I'm not sure
how
involved the child is, but she certainly knows something.” Frank Clark gave a grim smile. “It's quite a relief to know I am not the only one who can suspect even the most innocent in our society.”

“I was with the International Brigade in Spain,” McAllister simply said. “And, I'm from Glasgow.”

On his walk back to town, McAllister watched a gang of boys, newly released from school, swarming like ants over a half-demolished house, searching for firewood. Halloween was only a week away. It was the time of year, as much as the conversation with Mr. Clark, that added to his sense of foreboding. The ever-present image of another boy, another poor soul, drowned, this time in a river, not a canal, a boy whom McAllister had had to identify, came welling up like bile.

The talk of ghosts hadn't helped. The stairs he was walking up, the lanes where he took a shortcut, the Town House, the castle, the very cobblestones; like every place in Scotland they were soaked in history and ghosts.

“You're getting maudlin, McAllister,” he chivvied himself. “Time you took a break, a trip home, a few days, take the train, back to my own ghosts, aye, and a beer or two in my own pub.”

“Mrs. Ross, a word before you leave?”

He never quite knew how to address her. “Mrs. Ross” was normal office etiquette but the intimacy of that dance at the Highland Ball had him thinking of her as Joanne.

“Certainly, Mr. McAllister.”

Her reply and her smile turned it back on him. Joanne it would be.

“Joanne, I've been thinking on what your girls know about the disappearance of the wee boy.” There was never any need to say which boy.

“I know. But they'll never say anything now.” She offered no more of an explanation.

“I had a talk with Frank Clark. He worries about Annie in particular.”

“Oh really? You were discussing my child with the headmaster?”

“No, well, not really,” he said, floundering. “I was trying to find out more about what happened that day.”

“Why? You have as much of the story as anyone. Besides, it's all over. The man who did it is in jail.”

“Look, Joanne—”

“Look yourself, Mr. McAllister. You and Mr. Clark have no right discussing my daughter.” She caught his flush. “Or my family. I work here. That doesn't give you the right to stand in judgment.”

“It wasn't like that.”

“No? You have no idea what it's like in this town. You have no idea what I have had to go through. The talk, the snide looks, the pity. That's the worst of it—pity. And this job, a job I love and a job I think I could be good at—”

He nodded. “Of course you're good. You're—”

“—you have no idea what I go through to keep working here.” She was standing, back to him, holding on to the windowsill, not seeing the rolling clouds and darkening sky. She took a huge breath. “I get enough from my mother-in-law and the fishwifies I live amongst.” She breathed out. “I hear it all the time,” she said quietly, “a woman working, a woman not suffocating at the kitchen sink, it's just not done.” She turned. “I've even had to stop wearing slacks to placate my mother-in-law.” She leaned on his desk and looked straight at him. “I put up with enough without you gossiping about me.”

She left his office, she left the building, she collected her bike, she pedaled across town and she kept up her anger, almost all the way home, before giving in to despair on the final hundred yards.

“I can't leave him. I can't walk out. If they talk about me now, think how much worse it will be. And where would I go? I can't put the girls through the disgrace. I can't leave. I can't put the girls through any more. I must stay. For their sakes. I can't leave. For their sakes.”

It was a strange and strained week. Even Don noticed the distance between Joanne and McAllister. Rob used it as an excuse to stay out of the office as much as possible. He now dutifully sat in the courtroom attempting to pay attention; drunk and disorderly, assault (fighting after the football), drunk in charge of a horse, cycling without lights. One charge, stealing fishing nets, broke the monotony, as no one in court could understand the Peterhead accents.

His mind wandered, remembering Don's suggestion that he quiz WPC Ann McPherson on the detective chief inspector newly arrived to oversee the investigation. He also remembered that Sunday at the seaside.

“Seaside in October, we must be mad,” Ann had laughed. She was not happy at being seen with Rob around town, scared that Inspector Tompson might spot them. He was happy for the excuse to take the bike to the seaside town of Nairn, with a good seventeen miles of flat straight road to open up the throttle on the bike and stretch the speed limit with only the level crossing halfway to slow them. The wind, straight off the North Sea, gave them a good excuse to shelter in the dunes beneath his jacket. But Ann kept complaining of the sand getting in everywhere.

“Next case.” The shout of the court usher made him jump. He had missed the verdict. A fine, and bound over to keep the peace, the fishermen would no doubt sort it out themselves and be back in court next week.

“Driving whilst incapable” was next. Rob was too young to find a wooden bench uncomfortable, and the courtroom kept reminding him of the case that was on everyone's mind. But Karl unpronounceable would not be tried here, Rob reminded himself; no, that would be in the full panoply of the High Court; the peripatetic advocates and judge from Edinburgh would preside over the theater that that trial was sure to be.

Don was not convinced that Karl could have killed the boy, didn't like the timing nor the geography of it, he said. McAllister found the arrest too convenient. But no one quite knew the details of the case that Inspector Tompson had made to the procurator fiscal. Rob had asked, but Ann McPherson was not telling.

But who else could have done it? Rob reasoned. Nothing really bad went on in a cut-off place like this, so it has to be a stranger, he rationalized.

A general shuffling and rearranging and the next case, a boundary dispute between crofters, a dispute that had been simmering for forty-seven years, now started.

Half listening, practicing his shorthand, or hieroglyphics as Don called it, Rob went off into another dwam. I'll be out of here one day—of this he was sure—off to the big city, and then … He turned to a new page of his notebook, but instead of following the case before the court, he started to write like an automaton at a séance. He printed the boy's name,
JAMIE
, at the top of the page. Start at the beginning, write down what you know, wasn't that what McAllister was always harping on about? So …

The boy—on his way home from school—disappeared down the road from the McLean bungalow. Hold on, Rob told himself, start again—the boy—walking home—with his friends Annie and Jean—playing at ringing doorbells. Next morning—first light—he was found drowned. No, that's not right. Rob added a line—dead before he went into the water. He printed
BEFORE
.