Does Your Mother Know? (3 page)

“Yes, of course. You must be positively ill with worry.”

I didn’t answer. She gave a deprecatory cough. “Miss Morris, may I have your permission to move your mother’s things out of the Garden room and put them into the Rose room?”

“Of course. And will you give me your telephone number?”

I didn’t say, “If my mother is dead I’ll have to come and get her luggage,” but the statement hovered in the air like a miasma.

I wrote down the number and address she gave me and we hung up.

The management had thoughtfully left several pamphlets on the table for the benefit of the guests. I hadn’t felt much like looking at them earlier, but now I quickly sorted through until I found one that said
The Hebrides
on it. Good, there was a map nestled in the middle of all the advertisements. On an angled line north from Edinburgh, I located Skye. The town of Portree where Mrs. Waring had her B&B was on the east coast. Continuing in a northerly direction, I found the string of islands labelled Outer Hebrides. Lewis was the northernmost and largest of those islands and the west side, where the accident had occurred, faced the Atlantic.

Dotted lines indicated you could get from Skye to Lewis by ferry or plane.

I studied the map. Where was Joan going? Why was she driving on a dangerous, unfamiliar road so late at night?”

Then I saw it. The Standing Stones of Callanish. A note said the megaliths rivalled the splendour of Stonehenge and were probably built about five thousand years ago. Although nobody knew for certain, it was likely the stones were erected as lunar or solar calendars.

Well, that went along with psychodrumming and therapies that believed in “energies.” Is that where she was going? Would she be doing it at night? I shrugged to myself. All the better to commune with the spirits — both kinds, knowing Joan. It had been at least a month since I had talked to her. She might have been travelling all around Europe for all I knew, getting good energy from all the stone circles she could visit.

However, the puzzling thing at the moment was her passenger. Why was this woman with her? Harris said she was a resident of Lewis. Was she a tour guide, or even another psychodrummer showing Joan the way? Poor woman. I’m sure somebody was grieving.

I dialled Paula’s number. I needed to talk to her.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Paula, it’s me.”

“Chris!! What the hell’s happening? Is Joan in trouble again?”

“Deep, deep doo-doo.”

I ran through what I’d learned from Inspector Harris.

“Are you going to the scene yourself?” she asked.

“No way. The department paid for this conference, I’m enjoying it, and I don’t feel like bending my life out of shape again because of Joan. I’m sure she’s going to show up at the nearest bar.”

“Will you be able to concentrate?”

“Come on, Paula. You know me. Concentration is my middle name.”

“Oops, sorry I asked.”

I heard somebody in the background calling Paula’s name.

“Coming,” she called. “God, Chris, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. We have a planning meeting ten minutes ago. Yet another new piece of software they want us to try.”

“How’s work?”

“Okay, good, busy. Everybody’s looking forward to you getting started.”

I doubted that, but even her saying so gave me a pinch of homesickness. Paula was the one who’d talked me into applying for the job as a criminal profiler at the OPP centre in Orillia. I did get the
position, more correctly called a Behavioural Science Analyst, but I’d been there only a week when Jim suggested I attend the Edinburgh conference. Somebody else had been slated to go but had come down with a pregnancy. I was really the only one who could take her place.

“Say hello to all those eager folks then. Give Big Al a hug. Tell him I’m better.”

“Are you?”

“Of course. The Scottish air is bracing. Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Chris, don’t bullshit me. How’re you doing?”

“Better, truly I am. I’m only thinking about Sondra once every hour instead of every two minutes.”

“Good. There’s been no new news on that front. The press have gone scragging after some other target.” Another call in the background. “Shit. I’ve got to go. Call me immediately with the latest, do you hear?”

We hung up and I went back to gazing out of the window, which I seemed to be doing a lot lately. The famous castle loomed over the city from its black crags, and even from here I could see it was speckled with tourists. I’d done a quick skim of the guidebook on the flight over, and I knew this castle wasn’t quite as bloodstained as most. Nevertheless, the sombre grey walls and protective battlements were reminders of a much grimmer past, when life was cheap and destiny was determined by the reigning powers. Usually, I find history keeps our petty pace of daily living in perspective, but this afternoon I wasn’t comforted. In spite of my defiant words to Paula, I was a tad preoccupied. Frankly, I didn’t really believe Joan was dead. There had been too many times before when she’d vanished from sight only to surface with a new boyfriend in a new town. When I was quite young, these disappearances threw me into hysteria, although then the absence might last only a night or two. Since we had no family to turn to, I was usually left with a neighbour (resentful/judgemental, kind to me/indifferent to me). By the time I was fifteen, I’d become inured to these separations, and I moved in with Paula’s family, the Jacksons. It was Joan’s turn to have hysterics. She accused Alice Jackson of trying to replace her in my affections. Too late for that. I
refused to talk to her or come home, and after weeks of drink-induced maudlin tears, Joan finally gave up and left me in peace. I pretended the Jackson family was my own flesh and blood, and they were generous enough not to make an issue of it.

As if on cue, a shadow had drifted across the sun and the sky was quickly looking overcast, threatening rain. I went back to the telephone and called Inspector Harris, who answered right away.

Something of what I was feeling (righteously pissed off) must have come through in my voice, because he wasn’t as supercilious as before. On occasion, it helps to have attitude. I told him about the call from the B&B lady and gave him the address and phone number.

“As a matter of fact, I was about to telephone you meself. We have found a small suitcase and a handbag that must belong to Miss Morris. Her passport is inside, along with her driver’s licence and Visa card.”

“Was there any money?”

“Forty pounds sterling and some loose change. Some Scottish coins and a Canadian dollar coin.”

“A loonie.”

“Beg pardon?”

“That’s what we call them. From the moment they were minted they’ve been called loonies. It’s from the loon on the reverse side. It’s a national bird.”

“Ay. Well I should say then, we found one loonie in the change purse and the rest were of Scottish denomination, not called anything other than pees.”

I could tell he was trying to make nice.

“We missed both the handbag and the suitcase at first because the boot, as we call it, was quite crushed into the back seat. We had a hard time prising it open.”

“I wanted to ask you something, Inspector. You said the road drops off at the crash site. Is it near the sea? Could she have drowned?”

A call came through and beeped him, but this time he ignored it.

“Ay. I’m afraid we canna rule that out. She would have to walk off a wee space, but it isn’t totally out of the question. If that’s the case, given the tide, it will take a while for a body to be delivered up.”

Another beep summoned him. A busy man indeed.

I sighed and made my decision. “Inspector Harris, do you have any objection if I come to see you in person?”

“Och, no. Not at all. You’re in the business as it were, and obviously you know your mother better than we do. You might be able to shed some light on where she’s got to.”

“How do I get there?”

“The fastest way is to fly into Stornoway. Unfortunately, there isna a flight now until tomorrow. But one comes over at four o’clock. They’re running planes on Sunday these days, God forbid. Do you want the telephone number for the airport?”

“That’s okay. I can look it up. You’ve got a call waiting.”

“I’m afraid we can’t bear the cost of your flight, Miss Morris. It will have to be on your shilling, or should I say, your loonie?” The man was positively morphing into a comedian by the minute. “I can arrange to have somebody pick you up at the airport.”

“Thanks.”

After he hung up I phoned the airport and booked on the only flight that left for the island, four-ten the next afternoon.

I picked up my briefcase and headed out of the door. I refused to totally waste the afternoon, and I wanted to hear what defined some of my colleagues. And hey, I had a good excuse not to have done the exercise myself.

CHAPTER FIVE

At conferences like this, meant for homicide investigators, people tended to hang around with those who did the same kind of work. The two young female front-line officers from Vancouver had glommed onto the Scottish drug-control guys. I had gravitated to an international group of criminal profilers from the States, England, and even Australia. That evening, there were six of us, gathered around a table in the hotel restaurant, exchanging work-related gossip. I loved this scene. Two years ago, I’d passed the big four-O birthday, and although I kept myself in good shape, it was inevitable that I’d attract fewer of the ocular goings-over that guys do no matter how married, liberated, and pro-feminist they think they are. Once in a while, I missed the sexual
frisson
, fearing I was becoming an invisible “older woman.” Mostly, though, it was a relief. I was with men all the time, and we were all more relaxed if we didn’t have to worry about figuring out the silent language of the sexual dance.

None of this group at the table had been in the same class that day, so I was spared having to give an explanation of my summons.

The restaurant was classy and, in a small balcony at one end of the room, a young woman played the harp. Perhaps the subtle angelic insinuation got to the guys, because after dinner they all decided to go off in search of a livelier scene. I begged off and went back to my room early. There was no flashing red light on the
phone to indicate a message, but I checked with the front desk anyway. Nothing, Madam. After that I went to bed.

Fat chance of getting any sleep.

It was insomnia time, my nervous system flooded with adrenaline. At 1 a.m. I got out of bed, put a pillow next to the wall, and lay down on my back, my hips on the pillow, my legs straight up against the wall. A friend, Jayne, who was a Yoga enthusiast, had shown me this position, and it never failed to calm me down. I started to breathe again and all the tension I’d been holding in my gut began to let go. I stayed in that position for about ten minutes, getting up close and personal with the hotel carpet, which smelled like cleaning fluid. Finally, the pose had done its magic. I got back into bed and switched off the light. The street was surprisingly quiet considering we were in the centre of a large city. Maybe the Scots were better behaved than Canadians at night.

Was Joan dead? Like probing a sore tooth, I tried to determine my state of mind on that question, but other than some anxiety, I didn’t really feel anything. It had been so long since I’d actually seen her face to face — at least two years — and even before that there were long stretches when I heard nothing from her. But you can’t really ever forget you have a mother, nor can you help but grieve when she dies. Or so I’ve been told.

The next morning, in spite of the late night, I was awake early. As my flight wasn’t until the afternoon, I did what I’ve always done in times of stress: I plunged into my job. The session I’d signed up for was called “Forensic Psycholinguistics: Using Language Analysis for Identifying and Assessing Offenders.” It was a subject I was particularly interested in, and after a quick breakfast at the lavish buffet where I sampled home-cooked porridge, I went to the classroom. Looking around, I had the feeling I was as hung-over as some of my pals from the night before, but for different reasons.

The presenter arrived punctually and set up his papers at the podium. He was middle-aged, tall and skinny, and grey-haired. He looked like my idea of an English gentleman: dry as dust in his
tweed jacket and plain green tie. He just needed a briar pipe to complete the image.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Clive Nicholls. Please take your seats as quickly as possible because we have a lot of material to cover this morning.” His accent was crisply British and sounded much more authentic than that of Mrs.Waring.

A couple of stragglers came into the room and suddenly, Nicholls raised his voice.

“Move your bloody arses in here.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, and Nicolls smiled. “I do apologize for those remarks, but I wished to make a point. In moments of stress, people will revert to the language of their childhood, as Eliza Doolittle did when faced with the potential loss of her wager at the horse race.” He smiled again reassuringly. “An American might revert to ‘Move your ass’ or ‘Move your butt’; a Canadian might say ‘Get a move on, eh.’”

I was getting a bit sick of that joke. Besides, it’s a rural expression rather than an urban one.

“George Bernard Shaw brilliantly devised the first psycholinguist in the character of Henry Higgins. ‘I can place a woman within a mile of the place of her birth,’ he claimed. And we as psycholinguists, by analysing speech patterns, can provide invaluable help to officers in the field when they need to locate the identity of an anonymous caller, for instance, who claims he has placed a bomb in a local filling station, then hangs up. Similarly with victim statements.”

He glanced around the room. “We’ve all no doubt had the difficult experience of questioning a suspect who will look us in the eye and swear to his innocence in such a convincing manner that we doubt ourselves, even though he may have been caught on videotape and his guilt is incontrovertible. Some of these suspects even pass the so-called lie-detector test. As we know, that is a popular and misleading term for the polygraph, which registers only changes in pulse, skin temperature, and so on.” Another pause. Like every good performer, Professor Nicholls knew the importance of timing. “A sixteen-year-old virgin male will send the stylus
off the edge of the paper if asked ‘Have you ever had sex?’ He might answer ‘No’ with absolute honesty, but his embarrassment at the question makes him appear to be lying.”