A Small Death in the Great Glen (35 page)

Maybe it was a hangover from Halloween, maybe it was the looming Armistice ceremonies, or perhaps it was the persistent drizzle, but in the quiet, by the fire, in other households in the town, more soul searching was taking place.

Rob was still shaken by the scene in the office that morning. So he dealt with it the only way he knew how; he joked. That McAllister has some daft ideas, he told his mother, but this beat the lot. Hoodie crows, he laughed. Margaret McLean smiled at her son but said nothing. The child's screams still rang around her head. She hadn't a daughter, nor sisters, she couldn't remember her own childhood, but in her limited experience, little girls screamed at everything and anything. So she tried to let the absurd idea go. But couldn't.

With the resident next door, Margaret had had only one quibble—the rhododendron forest. Like Burnham Wood, she had told him, it was preparing to march across their lawn and take over. Father Morrison smiled his friends-and-neighbors smile, nodded frequently as she explained how little light her sunroom was receiving, and did nothing.

Rob thought the man harmless but … He remembered one unusually sunny summer—right after Father Morrison had arrived. Rob was eleven or twelve, and with two school friends, they were romping on the lawn in their swimming trunks, having water fights with the watering-can and buckets, playing at pulling each other's trunks down, when they caught a glimpse of a figure lurking in the same, but shorter, rhododendron bushes. They
spotted the camera. All three boys stopped their games, uncomfortable but not alarmed, and without a word being said either then or later, they went indoors. It was nothing.

Angus McLean informed no one of McAllister's visit. The passion behind the accusations had startled him. He heard McAllister out, made very little comment, thought about it for the rest of the day and then placed a phone call to an old friend, a former colleague who was now a distinguished member of the church hierarchy.

And Chiara. She told Peter and she told Gino. Unlike Chiara and Joanne, they could allow that perhaps a rare rogue priest could commit offenses against God and the Church. But Father Morrison? No, he was a good man. They knew him for a caring, charitable parish priest—better than many they had come across in different times and places.

Duncan Macdonald, visiting his parishioners, attending the sick in the hospital, the infirmary and the asylum, or sitting by his fire trying to compose next Sunday's sermon … in between, in the still moments, the memory of his niece's shrieks echoed in his head. He knew of abominable practices in all walks of life—why not amongst the clergy; we are men after all. He had no time for the notion of celibacy—how could such a person understand the everyday pressures of family life? The pressures on the celibate, and the loneliness; a recipe for disaster was how he saw it. But Father Morrison? The Reverend Macdonald was certain he was a good man; kind, caring, with a rare understanding as well as compassion for some of the unfortunates that he helped.

And Joanne; she was sitting alone in the newsroom, hoping to avoid McAllister and deep in thought. She did believe her girls, yet she still found it impossible to fathom their story. But the hoodie crow a priest? Never!

“Can I have a word?”

Joanne jumped.

“McAllister, you scared the living daylights out of me.”

She had her hand on her heart as she spoke. The room was empty; Don and Rob were doing whatever it was they were doing.

“I owe you an apology. I wasn't thinking. Too many things get covered up was what I was trying to say. I didn't mean
you
when I—”

“Apology accepted.” She rushed on to cover her embarrassment. “I've been thinking about what Annie and Jean saw. The idea of a priest being involved is so ridiculous but what if it was something like that, something similar, that they saw?”

“What exactly?”

“I don't know, McAllister. I've been thinking on it till I'm dizzy.”

“Can't you ask them again?”

“No, it's impossible.” She shivered. The distance between her and Annie was as wide as ever. “Peter Kowalski is convinced Karl the Polish man did not do this. To prove where he was at the time, he needs the tinkers to come forward. But Karl will never give them up to the police, especially after they saved his life. And he says that the night after he jumped ship, the night the boy disappeared, he went back down the harbor to try to get his belongings from the ship's captain. But the captain wouldn't let him on board.”

“Really? Tell me more.”

“Ask Peter Kowalski. Karl told him what happened that night, no, two nights it was. Then Peter picked him up the following morning, near the canal bridge on the road north.” She frowned as she faced the possibility. “But if it wasn't Karl, if it can be proven he couldn't have done it, who else, what else, could have killed, and done
things
to, a wee boy?”

F
IFTEEN
 
 

Don took over production of the
Gazette.
McAllister shut himself in his office, sitting at his desk like a hen on the nest, doing the jobs Don gave him, writing a perfunctory editorial, smoking enough to warrant a visit from the fire brigade, going over and over, again and again, the few facts that he had gleaned about the crime.

McAllister had talked to Peter Kowalski with no mention of his alternative theory on the fate of the boy. The notion of a priest harming a child would be met with ridicule, he now knew that, and Peter and the Corellis were Catholic, after all. Peter said the charge against Karl was based on his being in the vicinity of the canal the night the boy disappeared. Also Karl's greatcoat, the coat he had tried to retrieve from the ship, had been found on the canal banks. That, Karl couldn't explain. Peter didn't know why he believed him, but he did. Right time, right place, he had told McAllister, convenient at best, a witch hunt at worst, was how he put it. The coat was worrying, but there was bound to be an explanation. The tinkers, they could back up Karl's story—but would they? Peter hadn't been able to find any of the tribe that had rescued Karl from the river.

Don pointed out that there were enough holes in the fugitive's version of events to make it all very suspicious. He even told McAllister that it was possible that Inspector Tompson had it right. After all, they didn't know the whole story. Time and place, yes; motive?—Fear of capture. Don had listed the points. Death an accident? Maybe. Involuntary manslaughter a possible verdict.

“And the assault on the boy? Can you explain that away?” was McAllister's objection to this scenario.

The
Gazette
was out. Joanne was still wary of McAllister; she couldn't bear the haunted figure he had become of late. His obsession with the boy's death was raw and obvious. All her education and upbringing had taught her to leave such things to the police. They know what's best, she reasoned, that was their job. She wanted the cynical McAllister back. She liked that version better.

She liked the single Mrs. Joanne Ross much better also. With Bill away she was beginning to open herself up to possibilities. Her daydreams would start, One day I'll …

“Get ahold of yourself,” she muttered as she walked down Union Street, “a life of my own is as likely as …” She crossed the road trying to find a simile that, if written down, wouldn't be deleted by Don with his stubby wee pencil.

Joanne was on a mission. Six and a half weeks to Christmas and she hadn't started baking—I'm not much of a wife and even less of a housewife. Christmas in Scotland did not reach the Dickensian fervor displayed by the English. Christmas was quiet, a time for church and children. New Year was another matter. The distillery lorries were already out delivering throughout the county. Market stalls were busy taking orders for fattened geese and hens. The grocery shop on Union Street was frantic with women buying ingredients for Christmas puddings and New Year black bun. Shiny elfin-sized shovels poked out from open sacks standing on the floor displaying flour (four kinds), lentils, barley, peas (two kinds), and gleaming butter beans big as river pebbles. In drawers behind the counter were raisins, sultanas, currants, spices, crystallized fruit and all kinds of nuts. Male shop assistants were expertly measuring out and weighing the brown
paper bags before tying them with a neat double handle of twine and writing on them the name and address of the lady of the house, ready to be put on the afternoon trains or to be delivered by the emporium's distinctive vans with the coat of arms proudly painted on the side. The store was an institution in the counties of the north.

“Cash or charge, Mrs. Ferguson, or Lady Fraser, or Madam?” came the question as the orderly queue of ladies took their turn at the counter.

“How are you, Mrs. Ross? The bairns keeping well?”

“Fine thanks, Mr. Malcolm. Could I have a pound of currants, half a pound of raisins, some glacé cherries and some whole almonds?”

“Baking a Christmas cake are we?”

“Not a chance. I could never compete with my mother-in-law. Just a Dundee cake.”

“Mrs. Ross senior finished her baking long since, I suppose?”

“Aye, ten weeks she gives it, sitting in the larder, sooking up their daily dose of brandy. Black bun and Christmas cake take at least six weeks, so she tells me. I contribute the silver threepences for Christmas pudding, that's all she'll trust me with,” Joanne joked as she got out her purse. “What do I owe you?”

Payment was placed into a small screw-top barrel that whizzed around the shop on a system of pulleys conveying the money to the cashiers, lording it in an office that looked down on the shop floor.

“Hello, Mrs. Ross.” A blushing Mhairi stood with a list in one hand and a small case in the other. “Do you mind me?”

“Of course, how could I forget? Mhairi from the inn on the West Coast. What brings you over here? Oh, I see, the Christmas list. Of course!”

“I see Mr. Ross most days,” Mhairi told her. “He's fine.” I see him
every day and he's usually well away, she thought. But she would never say that. “Aye, I had some business to see to. Then I've to get all these messages for Mrs. Watt. I hope I can find time to look for a present for wee Rosemary. The train leaves back at four o'clock.”

Joanne had finished her shopping and wasn't due back at work for an hour.

“Tell you what, let's have a cup of tea. Coffee maybe? My treat.”

Mhairi blushed. “I couldn't.”

“Nonsense. Give Mr. Malcolm the list. Come with me whilst the order's being made up.” She took the girl's arm and marched her off.

To Mhairi, the noise, the coffee monster, the jukebox, the steamed-up windows, the unfamiliar menu, the casual way Rob McLean appeared and sat down to join them, were exciting and scary and bewildering all rolled into one.

“A cappuccino for me,” Rob ordered.

“Same,” said Joanne.

The waitress licked her pencil, taking in Mhairi's country face and clothes, waiting.