Gently with Love (22 page)

B
UT NOW I
had become a spectator and as a spectator I am easily bored. I declined Sinclair’s invitation to sit in on his fresh, almost frantic, round of statement-taking. I didn’t feel equal to the Mackenzies either; I wanted the matter settled before I returned there; and I made up my mind not to linger in Kylie on a footing so awkward, both for them and for me. I had done my job; Earle was cleared. I had been Verna’s trump card and she had played me. I knew better than to expect her gratitude and I surely had none to come from the Mackenzies. From Anne, perhaps, and Earle: but they could express it on a future occasion. I was expended. I could let my thoughts stray now to that long, two-day drive back to London.

I sat smoking by the peat fire in the lounge of the House of Reay while Sinclair did his business in a private room adjacent; I could at times hear his voice raised angrily, and the clump of feet as his customers came and went. Beattie and her mother were serving in the bar, but I had no more to say to either of them; if Beattie was concerned by the news of the latest tragedy she was hiding it beneath a phlegm that I would not have expected of her. Robert Mackenzie was avoiding me, which was no surprise either. I sat alone, playing out time, watching the grey smoke curl up the chimney.

Soon after 9 p.m. Sinclair was through; he came into the lounge with a drink in his hand. The chair Robertson had occupied was still placed opposite mine, but Sinclair ignored it and stood sipping abstractedly. At last he turned.

‘What in the hell shall I do?’

‘I think I would alert the police on Lewis.’

He didn’t immediately reply to this, but went back to his absent-minded sipping. ‘You ken – it’s like this. There will never be a body. That’s just the mortal cunning of it. A body goes in there at that state of the tide will shoot clean out into the Atlantic. I have had a word on the phone with the Coastguard and they can give me no hope at all. If it comes ashore it will be in Norway, and by then you could not tell it from a herring.’

‘Do the statements check?’

‘Ach! They may but be a lie with a multiple circumstance.’

‘Still, you’ve got them.’

He shrugged wearily and stared scowling at the smouldering peat. ‘I have to live with these people, you ken that. I cannot be marching them off by the dozen. If I prove that Iain Mackenzie is a liar I shall go near to depopulating the whole village.’

‘Accessories after the fact.’

‘Aye – every last one who made a false statement. And they are honest, decent enough people – what manner of justice would that be serving?’ His scowl deepened. ‘And if I did alert Lewis, it is ten to one that we would never take him. There are Mackenzies there and Mackenzie kin who would spirit him away, the one to the other. And there are boats enough – aye, and ships – and just one island after another. And maybe they set him on the mainland anyway, and he is sitting now in a train, rolling down to Carlisle.’

‘A general alert?’

‘Ach, it is senseless. I have nine sworn statements that the laddie is dead.’

‘Which you were questioning.’

‘I have no good reason. The Shirra will accept them, and I am covered.’ He drank deeply. ‘Just look at it this way. You ken, I ken they may be lying. So there’s a laddie out there now with a deed on his conscience and fear in his heart, and nowhere to go. He is dead. He cannot go home. He will never again walk his ain street. He has no papers and no identity. He is an outlaw in every land. Is not that punishment enough for the laddie, who we ken had some warrant for what he did? Would you not say it was worse than a spell in Barlinnie to be losing for ever the place of your childhood? I come from away, out of Harris, and I would not be free on such terms. I would suffer a sentence, and a long one, to set my foot in the islands again. He
may
not feel so about his town, but he may be feeling nothing at all. It is like that he is riding in the Gulf Stream between the Faeroes and Herma Ness. And we have the statements, square and clear, from men without a smirch on their record. I am thinking that justice will be served by accepting them, and I am wondering if your opinion is the same.’

I put on an owlish look. ‘You wish me to give it?’

‘You ken it will make my position firmer.’

I had to struggle not to smile at this shameless request for a guarantee of non-intervention. ‘Sambrooke will go free?’

‘Ach, yes! I will get Duggie Mackay to drop charges.’

I nodded. ‘He’s my only interest. What happens about Collins does not concern me.’

‘But you think I am doing right?’

‘I think that, in your place, I would do what you are proposing.’

‘Ach, and that’s enough from a man like you! And jings – you’re dry – I’ll ring for Robbie!’

He had no need to because, coincidentally, Robbie appeared at that moment with a tray. I would not accuse him outright of listening at the door, but he was a man who took his cues with an enviable promptness.

E
ARLE ARRIVED BACK
in Kyleness shortly before noon on the following day, and I postponed my departure long enough to be present at the event. I was resolved not to postpone it for longer. To a certain extent, I had been wrong about the attitude I might expect from the Mackenzies, but I thought it best to leave while the cordiality was still fresh. I had returned late from the House of Reay; I had found Iain and his father alone in the parlour. They were drinking together with a sort of quiet satisfaction and I was well enough versed in the ways of Kylie to know that their information was equal to my own. The old man greeted me with a gleam in his eye.

‘Sit you by the hearth, man, and take your dram.’

I did as I was bid. There could be no question that the climate called for such fortifications. The three of us drank.

‘And is Sinclair away?’

‘He’s away,’ I said.

‘He is a good man,’ James Mackenzie said. ‘He kens his work. Though I do not say that he is above taking hints from a better.’ He glanced at Iain, who nodded gravely.

‘The charges against Earle will be dropped,’ I said.

‘Aye – I kenned they would be. And the poor young laddie cannot answer charges. All that has been swallowed in Skoma Roast.’

‘His death has been notified.’

The old man drank. ‘I ken it will all go smoothly,’ he said. ‘At first, I thought Sinclair had some wildish notions. But if he ever did, it seems that he has dropped them.’ He gave me a keen look and raised his glass slightly.

‘Ach, I ken Sinclair,’ Iain Mackenzie said. ‘He is a man who runs away with himself at times. It was no bad luck that he had other brains by him.’ He also gestured with his glass.

I drank my whisky without further comment. If the Mackenzies chose to credit me with composing the matter, I saw no reason to decline the compliment. About Verna, however, I was not mistaken. When we met at breakfast her manner was distant; I had perhaps witnessed too much concerning Verna for our acquaintance to expect a prolonged future. Our conversation was terse.

‘When do you go, George?’

I told her I would go after seeing Earle.

‘Don’t you think that it might be better for him to find the house free of policemen?’

‘He may need the support of a non-Mackenzie.’

‘We are all his friends here.’

‘Sometimes that can be overpowering.’

She smiled flashingly, but not quite at me.

Anne I caught by herself in the garden, where she was walking Helen in her pram. She was very nervous. I think she was expecting me to interrogate her about what she knew. Probably it was not very much. She would not have written her letter if she had been in the Mackenzies’ inner council, but no doubt she had caught a hint or two and was on edge in case she should let them out. I sought to reassure her: then it was that her overriding anxiety broke through.

‘Oh George – what shall I say to him?’

‘You won’t need to say very much.’

‘I let him down. And then there’s Helen.’

‘I think you can leave Helen to speak for herself.’

‘Oh, I’ve been wicked.’ She turned to dab a tear. ‘How I wish – how I wish that Daddy was alive!’

‘Tell him you love him. That’s all he wants to hear.’

‘Oh George.’

We were interrupted by Verna.

When the moment came, and the Panda car bringing Earle turned crisply in at the gate, the entire household, including the domestic, were waiting in a group outside the house. I stood apart. James Mackenzie and his wife occupied the steps of the porch; Iain Mackenzie and Maisie stood on their left, with the domestic lurking behind; on their right stood Alex and Verna, supporting Anne, who was clasping Helen; I think we must have presented a formidable appearance to Earle as he climbed stiffly from the car. He paused there a moment, looking lost. He was in no better trim than when I had last seen him; the bruise under his eye had turned yellowish, and his ear was still puffy with inflammation. He came forward uncertainly. Anne was trembling; nobody seemed willing to speak a a word. Then suddenly, desperately, Anne held out Helen, who chose at that moment to utter a low cry. Earle stared at the baby and his eyes widened: he took a a quick, gulping breath.

‘But honey . . . she’s you!’

His lips spread in a smile and gingerly he held out his hands for Helen. Anne gave her to him; she hung on his arm.

That evening, I got as far as Stirling.

I
AM RELATING
the events of nine years ago and in consequence I can add an epilogue. James Collins’s death was duly registered and I believe that no more has been heard of him. I have not confirmed this: it was none of my business; neither have I been back to Kyleness. I have a memory for faces that might be stirred by some half-glimpsed Mackenzie, Macleod or Mackay. Then I would be placed in an awkward situation and perhaps find myself obliged to offend Inspector Sinclair; but I am against all forms of professional discourtesy and so I prefer not to run the risk.

Helen was christened in the kirk at Kyleness, and Earle married Anne there three weeks later. I met them afterwards in London, but in 1967 Earle accepted a post in Toronto. They flourish. Their family now is three; Helen has brothers Iain and James; they live in a charming out-of-town ranch house, of which Anne has sent me several photographs. Verna I hear of but incidentally. Verna wasted no time after Anne got married. Among the interesting people whom Alex brought down to Blockford was a retired Brigadier, an expert on the Raj. He was at that time divorcing his second wife and he felt that Verna might fill the vacancy. She felt so too. She lives now near Cheltenham in a modest country house, Pondicherry Lodge. What Alex did was much less predictable; he threw up broadcasting to study medicine. When he was qualified he spent a year doing locums and then returned, still single, to Rhodesia. He has a practice in a country district, remote from Salisbury, but in the area that his father used to police, and not very far from the plot of earth where Colin lies asleep. He and the others I hear of from Anne; she remains my only constant correspondent.

O
NE LAST NOTE
, dictated by vanity. A colleague of mine is a specialist in art frauds. The other evening he came up for a drink and immediately he went to examine my watercolour.

‘That’s a Prout. His best period.’

I felt flattered by my own acuteness. ‘What’s it worth?’

‘Something over five hundred.’

I didn’t tell him that I’d bought it for a simple tenner.