A Small Death in the Great Glen (4 page)

McAllister realized he had stepped into a well-worn argument. Breaking the Sabbath observance must have been a huge step for them, adding to their guilt immeasurably. Her husband stood. He had had enough.

“Many bairns his age were already working when I was a boy.” He glared at his wife. “Well able to look out for themselves.” Then, looking down at the carpet, he added in desperate justification, as though the sin had already been flung in their faces, “It doesn't matter what the kirk says about Sundays, you have to look after your family first.”

It was time to go, McAllister knew. Stages of grief, like stations of the cross, were a ritual. There was no need for him to hear of their innermost fears, their self-recrimination and rehashed arguments and all the other stages of grief that loss of their only son would surely bring. All this he knew only too well.

Walking gingerly on the wet cobbles, down the narrow street, back to the office, a thin mist shrouding him, he hunched his shoulders and pulled down his hat against rain and melancholy and the knowledge that Jamie's parents had now entered the realm of the half people—parents who bury a child.

Rob decided that a motorbike was essential to life as a star reporter. His mother's respectable gray Wolseley was a woman's car; he couldn't keep borrowing it.

“I'll be twenty-one next year”—as though that made him an
adult—“I'll buy the bike myself,” he told his parents, and gave a solemn promise to never drive with a drink in him and never to use the bike if there was even a hint of black ice. They capitulated.

Saturday was a half day at the
Highland Gazette,
but not for part-timer Joanne. She had Fridays and Saturdays off and was usually scrubbing floors, catching up on the washing, weeding the vegetables or plucking a chicken for the Sunday dinner at this time of the week. This morning, however, she was at the office early to meet Rob, who was off to chase the story of the missing sailor—at least that's what he told Don. But first, they were hoping to buy a motorbike. And it was Don, Rob reasoned, who had taught him to never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Joanne knew about motorbikes. She'd been a dispatch rider in the uncertain days of 1944. She knew a surprising amount about the internal combustion engine.

“The most important thing is—”

“Carry a spare spark plug! I know,” said Rob.

They drove to the outskirts of the town. 'Round the back of the bungalow belonging to an usher at the magistrates' court gleamed a red Triumph 650. Rob walked around it a few times admiring the color. Trying to look knowledgeable, he sat on it, barely hiding his longing.

“Hop on the back, I'll take ye for a drive,” the owner offered.

“Could Joanne take it out? She's the friend I was telling you about. The one from the army.”

“You niver said anything about your soldier friend being a lassie.”

Joanne quickly launched into a technical spiel, asking all the right questions about cylinders, carburetor, power-to-weight ratio, then got down on her haunches to inspect the engine. Rob fooled around with the usher's three children in the back garden,
staying well clear of the discussions. Then they mounted the bike, Joanne driving, heading out toward Culloden to see how it handled the hills and bends.

After she had some fun putting a few scares into him, Joanne shouted over her shoulder, “This is a great bike, immaculate condition, as we in the classifieds would say.”

Rob left her to strike the deal. His role was to hand over the cash.

“You owe me one. I'll add it to the ever-growing list,” Joanne reminded him.

“You can always borrow my bike.”

“I'll hold you to that, but meanwhile babysitting would be a good payback.”

“Don't you need someone for tonight? You're off to the Highland Ball, aren't you?”

“Thanks, but I'm fixed. The girls are going to my sister's. They love being with their cousins, so it's fine.”

They waved their cheerios. Rob roared off on his new Triumph. Joanne drove the McLeans' car back, looking forward to a chat and a cup of tea with Rob's mother.

The tip had come from Don McLeod. As ever.

“Right, laddie, I've set it up, just mention my name.”

“Great, I'm looking forward to a run on the new bike.”

“Why you want to go chasing after some Polish seaman is beyond me; he'll be just another manny wanting to get out of his country—not that I blame him.”

“McAllister wants some human interest stories.”

“This is a weekly newspaper, not some women's sob-sheet,” Don shouted. But too late—Rob's motorbike boots could be heard at the bottom of the stairs.

The trip down to the harbor to meet Don's informant was Rob's chance to try out his new image. He fancied himself as Scotland's answer to Marlon Brando. I'm off down the waterfront, he joked to himself. He drove out of town, past the old fort and the Black Watch barracks, crossed the rail tracks, opening up the throttle along the shore road through the salt marsh fields with tinkers' ponies dotted around like clumps of dirty melting snow. Quarreling gulls and feeding migratory birds took no notice as he sped past the town dump toward the harbor. Right in front of the window of the Harborside Café, he propped the Triumph, hoping everyone would notice the gleaming machine.

A blast of steamy warmth hit Rob as he opened the door. His cheeks and ears tingled with the sudden change in temperature.

“Were ye born in a barn, Rob McLean?” Mrs. McLeary, the café's owner, cook, waitress and cashier, shouted. He shut the door quickly. She was a scary woman. A man in work overalls sat alone at the corner table. He grinned up at Rob.

“So you're Rob. How're you doing?” They shook hands. “Maybe it's nothing, but Mr. McLeod is always interested in tips.”

“I bet he is.”

“Aye, that's right. But usually of the horse variety.” The man laughed. “Let's order. It's been a long night.”

“Sorry I'm late. I just bought a bike.”

“It looks grand. So, breakfast?”

“Aye, on the
Gazette.
”

Rob nodded toward the wharf as they tucked in. “Another world out there.”

Three ships, six fishing boats and a filthy dredger stood along the busy wharf where the river flowed into the firth. Timber from Scandinavia, coal from Newcastle, cement and building supplies were the main cargoes in, grain for the distilleries the main cargo
out. Its ancient beginnings, its connections with the Baltic Hanseatic League, the departure of emigrant ships during the Clearances, the everyday trade of centuries, had made the deep harbor the most important in the north. For a small town, the port brought the exotic: foreigners who spoke no English, who looked different; romantic names and ports of registration painted above the Plimsoll line, strange flags flapping. An Eskimo from a Greenland fishing boat, resplendent in traditional sealskins, had once come into the café. Mrs. McLeary had served him the usual fare of a big fry-up and stewed tea. He paid in coin of the realm like anyone else, she said.

Over extra-strength tea and light fluffy rolls bursting with bacon, Rob took notes, trying to keep the grease stains off his notebook. Born nosy, he was good at this part of the job, the chatting, the questioning; he was intrigued by the minutiae of other people's lives—excellent traits for a journalist.

“So what made you go and look?”

“The boat's registered in Danzig, their last port was Tallinn, but they were shouting in Russian. I could hear them clear. Sound carries across water at night.”

“Are you sure it was Russian?”

“I was on the Murmansk convoys. I can tell Polish from Russian. And German.” His tone was sharp, not used to being doubted by a boy.

“As I was saying, there was fierce arguing. Then it went quiet. I did ma rounds so it would have been maybe half an hour afore I heard a big splash from round the other side o' the ship. Across the river there was a boat, a salmon cobble it looked like, waiting for the turn in the tide to take them upriver, so I thought. Then a short whiley later I saw two folk pulling summat aboard.”

“What was it?”

“Couldn't tell, the moon was keeking in and out from behind
the clouds. I still had to check the Bond House and by the time I got back there was nothing and nobody.”

Rob paid for the nightwatchman's breakfast and, intrigued by the romance of the port, the ships, the foreign sailors, he made for the wharf.

I really need a leather motorbike cap and jacket, he thought.

Slipping past the guard's hut, making his way down the line of huge iron bollards squatting like sumo wrestlers along the water's edge, he noticed one ship lying separate from the others.

“It's yerself,” Constable Grant shouted from the top of the gangplank. Not much older than Rob, Willie Grant was front-row-forward big.

“So where's this runaway Russian, Willie?”

“He's Polish.”

“Thanks.” Rob grinned.

Realizing he'd let on to something he wasn't supposed to, Willie Grant sulked. Rob changed tack with “Did you see thon new goalie Thistle has? Jammy hands. They'll put one over on Caley next week, you'll see.”

Five minutes of minute detail followed as to why Caledonian Football Club would always beat Thistle. Rob judged his moment as Willie blethered on.

“So where is he now, Willie, this Polish fellow?”

“No one knows nothing 'cept that the sailor is no here. The captain doesnae speak English an' Peter the Pole, yon engineer manny, he came down to help us 'cos he speaks a bit o' Russian an' all. But the ship'll be sailing bye 'n' bye, no reason not to. The Polish fella just wants a better life, most like.”

“Ta, Willie, you're a pal.”

“You never heard nothing from me, mind.”

Frozen from the biting wind, Rob returned to the café to jot down some notes. He sat staring out of the steamed-up window,
nursing another mug of tea. The vista of harbor, river and firth seemed to be melting, cranes alongside the wharf looming like giant storks; distant fishermen rowing out their nets were tiny figures dissolving in and out of the watery scene of sea mist and steam. He tried to picture that night. Someone, something, thrown overboard at the right time of the tide would drift with the flow of the river straight to any waiting boat. The swift currents where the river met the narrow waters of the firth were notorious. Maybe they were smuggling, Rob hoped. Vodka in unlabeled bottles was readily obtainable. Usually in this very café.

Rob was a romantic. He looked and thought like a nineteenth-century romantic; very out of place in a small Scottish town. He had once been told by a teacher at the academy that his curiosity and wild imagination would one day land him in a lot of trouble. Instead it had landed him a job. This will make a good story, he decided.

“Do you know where I can find Peter the Pole?”

“Mr. Kowalski to you,” Mrs. McLeary informed him. “He's away up Strathpeffer fishing, is what I heard.”