A Small Death in the Great Glen (58 page)

We continue to congratulate ourselves on what a nice wee town we have. Yes, there are many many good points about living here, McAllister acknowledged that, but until there is justice for Jamie, I'll not be able to appreciate them.

“Thank goodness I never say maudlin rubbish like this out loud,” he muttered.

It wasn't until the end of January that McAllister had all he needed. DCI Westland had been gone nearly six weeks. Inspector Tompson was unbearably smug and completely safe. Father Morrison was dead and buried. The identity of the killer of wee Jamie would remain one of life's great mysteries was the common consensus.

The first piece of information came via the Reverend Macdonald. It was a completely innocuous conversation. Joanne and Rob were typing away, chatting in between bouts of typewriter wrestling, discussing the use of Gaelic speakers instead of secret codes in the last war.

“They needn't have bothered with Gaelic speakers, anyone from Glasgow is completely unintelligible to friend and foe,” she laughed.

“I heard that,” McAllister said from across the room, where he was busy working on the layout of that week's edition.

“That was one of the problems my Annie had when she was a bridesmaid, she couldn't understand the accents of those wee Italian Scottish girls.” She smiled at the memory. “And when the dreaded Inspector Tompson was questioning her, she missed a lot of what he was saying because of his accent and also because he was speaking at the poor child in his best Military Police sergeant shout.”

McAllister and Rob simultaneously said, “What?”

“Didn't you know? My brother-in-law told me. Inspector
Tompson was in the Military Police during the war. When he was demobbed, he became a policeman.”

The second piece of information came from Jimmy via Don.

“I don't see how this will help any,” he said, “and my brother Keith willny swear to it, but he heard that sometime before I was there, Inspector Tompson was a part-time instructor at the boxing club in Glasgow. Early on in the war it was.”

Another proof, or nonproof as McAllister termed it, he had kept to himself for some time. Comparing the photographs Don had singled out from the envelope still locked in the office safe with the group photograph of the boys from the boxing club, the one with Kenneth, his brother, and a very young Jimmy McPhee, the size was the same, the paper was the same, the printing looked similar, but so what? It proved nothing.

And finally the nontestimony of Davy Soutar. Don had checked, and yes, it was the man himself who had had Davy Soutar transferred from Barlinnie so he could keep an eye on him.

Then it was time. Two phone calls.

“I've got what you were looking for. I think we should meet,” he said at the start of the first call.

“Tonight. Not too late. Seven, I said. Don't want to scare him off.” The second phone call.

No turning back now.

He parked the car between the streetlamps under skeletal sycamore trees, opposite the path to the Islands suspension bridge. He was early. He lit a cigarette and waited. The river with a low-pitched tinnitus roar filled the night. A car drew up behind him. The driver got out, checked in McAllister's window, then walked around, opened the passenger door and took a seat. The smell of Brylcreem mixed with that of new wool.

“Nice coat,” McAllister said. “New?”

“What's this rigmarole all about then?” Tompson seemed nervous but still very much in control.

“As I told you on the phone, I've got what you were searching for.”

“There was a proper police search. Anything you've found, if you
have
found anything, is police evidence.”

“No, I don't think you'll want this handed over. You can probably wriggle out of a charge of destroying evidence but that's too big a risk, especially if the procurator sees the contents. Your military greatcoat was really of no consequence. But you were seen wearing it when you grabbed the boy.

“By a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, in the half dark, and they told everyone it was a hoodie crow.”

“Yes. But just in case anyone else saw a man in a greatcoat that night, you left Karl's coat on the canal banks. I presume you took his coat from the captain when you went to interview him on the ship. And I presume you were wearing your own coat when you put Jamie's body into the water, weren't you?”

“Pure speculation. You'll have to do better than that, McAllister.”

“Davy Soutar. He was one of your earlier victims.”

“I heard you wanted to speak to him. The prison governor asked my opinion, I told him you were out to make trouble, so you've no chance of getting near that thieving wee liar. And if by chance he does get to speak to you, his life will be no worth living. I'll see to that.”

“You're wrong. I've heard his story. He passed it on to a friend—a friend who can give him protection.”

“And who will take a criminal's word against mine? Wrong again, McAllister.”

“Aye, that inquiry at the home you were all brought up in;
you escaped that time, didn't you? Another of your victims? He couldn't take it anymore so he killed himself? And John Morrison Bain, he wasn't going to turn you in, was he? After all, he took the photos. But I suppose it's the way of it, first a victim, then a perpetrator.”

“You know nothing, McAllister, nothing at all. I was an orphan, sent to that hellhole at five. John Bain was in the same dormitory. We grew up together, if you could call it that. We were survivors, friends, we looked out for each other.”

Poor wee bugger, McAllister thought. He felt for the boy but not for the man; No wonder he is what he is.

“The boxing club?”

“Don't tell me there's something the grand know-it-all editor from down south doesn't know? But you'll not be here for much longer; I'm going to make sure you're out of a job.”

“I heard you were an instructor there. A good place to find victims.”

“My my, Mr. Big Shot, you really fancy yourself as the great detective.”

McAllister clenched his fist deep in his pocket, the key biting into his palm. He had struggled with this moment over the past weeks, ever since Rob had discovered the photos. The key? The envelope of filth? The two incriminating pictures? Which would he show first?

Suddenly, he wanted this over with.

“I have the boy's door key. It didn't burn. The shoelace that it was tied to did. No wonder you couldn't find it, it was in there in the stove along with what was left of your old army coat. I tried it. It fits Jamie's front door. They're gone now, his mother and father, back to the Isles, couldn't stay here; what happened to wee Jamie, it broke their hearts.”

“You haven't come up with anything that I can't explain away.”
Tompson laughed. “Is that it, McAllister? That's all you've got? You'll have to do better than that.”

“So you did kill the boy?”

“No. And since you'll never prove anything, I might as well tell you. It was an accident. It was an accident I was even home at that time of the day. An accident I was there when the bell rang. I was about to go back on shift but when I opened the door, there he was; I picked him up to give him a shaking, put the fear of God into him. I closed my coat over him, took him over to John Bain's studio. John—Father Morrison to you—he had this harmless wee … idiosyncrasy … he liked taking pictures of boys. I got him over there but the lad had peed himself and wouldn't stop bawling so I shook him some more and he had some sort of fit, anyway he went blue, couldn't breathe, and he died. Weak, he was. Nothing we could do.”

“And you didn't call an ambulance or take him to the infirmary.”

“It was too late.”

“And you couldn't tell the truth—that he'd died of fright, in case your past somehow came out.” Tompson nodded. “So you took him up to the canal and put him in. Burned the coat in case there was any evidence, hairs and suchlike, and then played your part as investigator of the tragedy, finding a convenient scapegoat in the Polish man. That didn't stick. But so what? After all, who'd suspect you of all people?”

Tompson was nodding in agreement with McAllister's account, completely oblivious to the awfulness of it all. When the journalist stopped speaking, he, head down, gave a half glance toward McAllister to see if he had finished, to know if it was over.

McAllister finished his cigarette and sat still, staring into the overhead canopy of shaking skeleton branches outlined against the stars. He let the story settle. He was good at pauses. Then
Tompson in his certainty, in his arrogance, once more misjudged the man beside him and allowed a small almost imperceptible sigh to escape. In unison, the leather of the car seat gave out a soft breath as the man let his bones relax.

That did it. When he was certain nothing more would be said, nothing added, no excuses, no sympathy expressed, no regrets, nothing, McAllister decided. Neither raising his voice, nor allowing emotion to color his words, holding tightly to the steering wheel to keep his hands from grasping, hitting, strangling, he began, telling it as though he was discussing an abstract puzzle that had nothing to do with the actual, physical abuse and the death of a wee boy.

“No, Tompson. That is
not
what happened. You
couldn't
call for an ambulance, could you? You knew there was physical evidence of what you had done to the boy; you knew he might tell, no matter how much you scared him. You couldn't risk that, so you killed wee Jamie. Then you concocted a story for Father Morrison. But that only worked so far. When the priest realized that you were back to your old perverted ways, and that you had killed the boy, he refused to help. He had come to the Highlands to put the past behind him. He was trying to atone for his sins. Maybe he swallowed your tale that the death was an accident. More likely he knew the truth but chose to believe you in order to protect the Church. He wouldn't report you, but neither would he cover up for you. And he couldn't continue to live here knowing what he did about you, so he left.”

“He was my confessor, he couldn't turn me in. But John Morrison Bain was no longer my friend. God would be my judge he said. And now he's gone, very conveniently for me, and you will never be able to prove any of this. I, on the other hand, could easily make a case for Father Morrison being the murderer.”

McAllister flicked on his lighter. He held up one of the
photographs, one of the pictures of Tompson—hard to identify without corroboration, but it was him and a naked sniveling terrified Davy Soutar.

“Where did you get that?” Tompson lunged toward McAllister.

The passenger door opened. Jimmy McPhee reached in—a flurry of jabs, face, solar plexus, jaw again. He dragged Tompson out with the help of a brother. They suspended him between them, an arm around each of their shoulders, and with his feet dragging, for all the world like a New Year drunk, they half-marched, half-dragged the inspector along the path and onto the suspension bridge.