A Small Death in the Great Glen (46 page)

Willie stopped at the nurse's station as he left. “Can you figure this out?” He handed her his notebook. “I canny make head or tail o' it.”

The sister squinted at the spidery scrawl.

“After the doctors' handwriting I've had to put up with, this is easy.”

In the dark, they tramped along both sides of the tracks where the priest was thought to have flown the carriage. The snow was now horizontal, driven by a fierce whistling wind. An arctic hour and a half later, PC Grant called off the search, concerned for the safety of his helpers.

“Daylight the morrow, lads. Meet at the car park of the Carr-bridge Hotel.”

Willie Grant went back to the police station to discover one more problem; the phones were down. So he did the only thing possible. He went to bed.

It was only a few weeks to the solstice. Dawn came about eight o'clock. Willie Grant had been up for some time preparing a huge breakfast, his recipe for a successful day's work. And today was looking to be very hard work. Not the least of it would be shoveling snow. Then there was the matter of no phones. Added to that was the sole responsibility of finding this man. But Willie still made time for breakfast.

Snow chains on, he backed the old Land Rover out onto the main road. Crews spreading salt followed the snowplow and with a vehicle like his, PC Grant had no problem getting to the hotel. The early sun laid a pink glow over the snow, the mountains, the lochs and the tarns. Along the horizon, the pink quickly turned deeper and deeper to a pure blood red, shot through with shimmering, shifting pink, orange and violet. The high sky was deep
cerulean blue, the air still and calm and crisp and cold. And dangerous.

“Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning,” Willie muttered.

Other Land Rovers, some locals on foot and two men with ponies met up in the hotel car park. One volunteer, a shepherd, had brought his dogs. The black-and-white collies were more used to digging for lost sheep but had shown a talent for finding other lost creatures. Maps were consulted, opinions solicited, options agreed on, then off set the raggedy band, each with a section of track to scour with a rail crew on a push-and-pull track-maintenance bogie at the ready to relay information up and down the tracks. Willie Grant and his team, including the dogs, were to cover the downward run toward the pass of Drumochter. They searched for signs of disturbance in the snow, but the storm had continued most of the night, masking everything. A scant hour later the men began to look upward as often as downward. The sky was closing in.

“Keep at it, lads. As long as possible.” Willie passed a flask of tea among the crew as they continued their search. He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the snow. Coming down the tracks toward them was the bogie.

“Constable Grant,” came the shout. “We've found him.”

The vehicle came to a halt on a long screech of brakes. The men crowded around, eager for news.

“The receptionist at a guesthouse in Kingussie says a big man, soaking wet and covered in snow, came looking for a taxi. Said it was important he got to Glasgow and the train was no moving. No one local would risk the journey, but another guest, in a hurry to be away before the storm set in for good, he offered the fellow a lift. They went off thegither on the main road south.”

“When was that road closed?” Willie was anxious.

“Not till a whiley later. The weather was nor'easterly.”

“Was the road further south snowed up?”

“No knowing, Willie.” One of the men thought about it. “Sometimes it's all this side o' the hills. Sometimes it's worse o'er yonder.”

“So he could have got through, you're saying.”

“Aye, mebby.”

A few big soft flakes began a gentle dance. It was time to give up. The rail crew offered everyone a lift back to the station on the bogie. Most of the searchers clambered aboard. The shepherd, deciding to walk back along the tracks, whistled for his dogs. One came immediately. One didn't. The big collie bitch started to sniff at the snow farther along the search area, toward the main road. Then she sniffed in tight circles, running around a clump of gorse. She started to dig with happy snuffling grunts, slowly at first, then faster, certain, her companion circling her, making small encouraging yelps.

“Leave her be,” said her master to the watching team. “Stand back and let her do her work.”

They were well trained, these collies, barking only in an emergency. A small piece of black cloth was uncovered. The dog sat back, satisfied. Now it was her master's turn. Willie and the shepherd crouched down and continued to widen and deepen the hole with their bare hands. He pulled. A bundle of cloth came out of the snowdrift. A neatly rolled cassock.

“He'd have taken that off—all the better to move in the snow. Keep digging, lads, make sure there's nothing else. I'll put markers around the area so's we can find it later.”

“Well, no much later,” the shepherd told him. “Fifteen minutes or thereabouts and it'll be another day before we can come back. If that.”

“Oh aye?” Willie asked.

The older man stared at the constable with steel gray eyes.

“Aye,” apologized Willie. “You're the local.”

No more was discovered. The men left, glad that their efforts had yielded something, if not the man himself. Willie set back out to check the progress of the snowplows and to catch any more news from the surrounding villages. There was still no telephone, no messages. He didn't hold out much hope for finding this priest fellow.

“Long gone,” he was convinced. “Back to his protectors.”

T
WENTY
 
 

Ouch! That hurt!”

Chiara fidgeted, impatient to get down from the dining table, where she was standing so Aunty Lita could adjust the hem of the heavy satin wedding gown.

“Well, keep still. You're jumping around like a circus flea.”

“But, Aunty, I have to meet Peter. I'm already late.”

“Cara, he loves you—he'll wait.”

“Whose crazy idea was it to get married in December anyway?”

“It means a lot to Peter, to marry you on his mother's birthday. So romantic.”

A week to go; Peter had absolutely refused to cancel or postpone the wedding. Karl is in prison, there is nothing we can do but wait, he told her when she had raised the question. Peter was shaken, even humiliated, by the reaction of some in the town. He had assumed that after all this time he was one of them, a citizen of the Highlands. But no more; he now knew there would always be those who would look closely at him when a scapegoat was needed. The Corellis had also suffered—they were outsiders, accepted, but still outsiders and always were, always would be. The attitude of Inspector Tompson shocked him; his logic was that Karl, as a stranger
and
a foreigner, must be guilty. The policeman's attitude that he, Peter Kowalski, fifteen years in the town, was guilty by association was, to the inspector, a logical conclusion. Karl's imprisonment, his own brief incarceration, had changed Peter. That his place, their place, in this Highland society that he had held so dear was tenuous and that blame for the unexplained,
for plagues, famine and pestilence, could be used as an excuse to take away all that he had worked for—that shocked him.

Chiara had shared their fears with Joanne, who had cheerfully informed her that although she was Scottish, she too was an outsider, and that's the way it always will be. “Even when I'm dead and buried,” she said, and Joanne had laughed.

Gino walked in. “An angel.” He beamed at his daughter. “And so like your mother.” He couldn't hide the tears. “But it's no problem, Chiara
mia.
If you want, we have the wedding in summer. You wait another seven months, no? You tell me, I do it. For you, anything.”

“Papa, you know I didn't mean it.” Chiara was still agitated. “I'm worried, that's all. Peter is still upset, and will our friends make it through the snow? The Edinburgh lot are fine, they'll come along the coast. But everyone from Glasgow has to come over the mountains. I hope they don't get stuck.”

“All the families are meeting in Edinburgh, and there's no snow on the East Coast,” Gino assured her.

“There's no point in waiting another seven months, I don't think they have summer in Scotland.” Aunt Lita was half-joking. “Maybe in a week the snow will be gone. But it would be lovely to have a white Christmas.”

They met that evening in the small restaurant and cocktail bar, perhaps the only sophisticated venue in town. It was a last chance for a quiet evening alone, to talk, before being swept up in the wedding drama where, increasingly, Peter felt like an actor in an especially effervescent Italian opera.

In the corner, at a candlelit table, they sat quietly, ate sparingly and looked at each other often. The waiter came and went, as unnoticed as the food. Chiara was immensely glad that Peter seemed to have recovered his good cheer.

Dinner over, he inquired, “Would you like a digestive?”

“No thank you.” Chiara was dreamy, slightly inebriated from the wine.

“I have a request.” He reached into his pocket, took out a red box and laid it on the table between them. “Would you wear this when we marry? It was my mother's.”

Chiara stared at the necklace shimmering in the candlelight, then stared at Peter.

“How on earth did you get this?”

“You know some of the story of Karl. The rest I will tell you, but this, this precious gift, he brought from my mother, and now it is for you. I want you to wear it on our wedding day.”

Chiara was mesmerized by the gift and the knowledge that this man, who had brought joy and love and hope to her, her family, their friends, was to marry her. Next week.

“Peter. This is so beautiful. Thank you.” In English, it seemed a pitiful, small phrase, “thank you,” but she could find no other, and he spoke no Italian. She held it up. He watched the motes of light dance across her skin, her hair. “I will always think of your mother when I wear it.”