North Sea Requiem (13 page)

“Including here.” Joanne knew that acid was kept in the
Gazette
typesetting room. “And in Hector's studio,” she added, “but I made him get rid of it and told him never to mention he kept acid. You know how bad that would look to Sergeant Patience.”

“Good thinking.” McAllister knew this may not be strictly legal but was glad of Joanne's decision. He had also warned Don, whose job it was, laid down in union rules, to liaise between journalists and printers, to be careful not to upset the printers.
A temperamental lot, printers,
he'd said after DI Dunne had explained to him, “We're only here to find out about the missing bottle.” His tone had been that of a curious archaeologist trying to identify a rune.

“None in the print room are happy,” Don said. “They're offended anyone should think one of them guilty of throwing acid.”
That's a right cowardly act . . . none o' us would do such a thing,
the father of the chapel told him, affronted at any interference in his bailiwick.

•   •   •

Midafternoon, McAllister was in the reporters' room. He had asked everyone to attend, so, along with Don, Joanne, Rob, and Hector, Mal Forbes was there with Fiona.

“The police don't know if the acid came from here,” McAllister started. “The bottle was smashed to bits. Our men have had their fingerprints taken, including the father of the chapel. DI Dunne asked if we would volunteer to have our prints . . .”

“
Gazette,
” Joanne answered. “A moment please.” She handed the receiver to McAllister.

“Aye. Right. I see.” McAllister was doodling naughts and crosses on a piece of copy paper as he listened. “Never!” His pencil stabbed through the paper and broke. “Have you arrested them? Aye, I know . . . helping with inquiries. Aye. Thanks for letting me know.” He hung up the receiver. The others were watching him, waiting, as he lit a cigarette. “The bottle came from here.”

Rob was indignant that the printers should be suspected. “None of our people—”

“DI Dunne has taken Alan Fordyce, the apprentice compositor, in for questioning. His thumbprint is on a piece of glass from the bottle found at the scene.” McAllister blew out a long stream of smoke towards heaven.

“Never.” Don was indignant. “He'd never . . .” The others saw a thought as obvious as a cloud crossing the sun at midday. “He plays for Glen Achilty.”

Joanne took a moment longer than the others to work this out. “Shinty?”

“Aye, lass, shinty.” Don climbed down from his stool. “I'd better go and speak to the father of the chapel.”

“Too late. Another print matches his.” McAllister was partly horrified at the thought someone at the
Gazette
might be involved, partly concerned that the printers would not be released in time to print the next edition, and mostly confused. The father of the chapel was the epitome of respectability.

“So, no need for us to give our fingerprints then,” Mal Forbes said.

Joanne ignored Mal. “What will we do?” she asked McAllister.

He shrugged. “Wait.” He saw she was waiting for more.

Don was beginning to take an interest. “Mislead, confuse, confound—all and more of the above—then cobble together an article . . .” This was his territory—the print room, shinty, the men he worked with, some he had known for twenty years and more.

“Send the readers off in different directions,” Joanne continued.

“Anywhere but the print-shop of the
Highland Gazette,
” McAllister finished.

Forty minutes later, Don remembered. He waited another hour until everyone had left, then asked McAllister did he fancy a drink. “Only a pint,” he said, “that doesn't count as alcohol.”

Don didn't want to talk in his usual haunts, so they walked across the river to a pub on Glen Urquhart Road. It was midweek quiet. They found a corner where only the observers on the top deck of the buses stopping outside could see them, and only if they squinted through unwashed windows into the shadows of the nineteenth-century bar lit with 40-watt bulbs filtered through lampshades as old as the pub.

“The father of the chapel lives on Planefield Road,” Don started, and then remembered that even after two years, McAllister did not know every street, lane, and vennel in the
town. “Planefield Road runs along at the back of the school. That's the entrance to the playgrounds where Nurse Urquhart was attacked.”

“A coincidence surely.” McAllister leaned forwards, staring at Don. “It has to be.”

“Aye, probably. But let me think on it, and I'll ask around.” He didn't say, but Don had heard something about Nurse Urquhart and the printer's wife. He couldn't remember what; recent or past he couldn't recall, either.

McAllister knew that if there was anything to be found out about the vendettas of the town, Don would find it. “DI Dunne will know this?” he asked.

“Maybe.”

“So what do we do?”

“Make sure we get the paper out.” Don was not being heartless, just realistic. “That's the best way to help the Urquharts—keeping the story in the news, maybe jogging someone's memory. You know.”

McAllister did indeed know. What he also knew was that if this evil originated in the
Highland Gazette,
their rivals would love to splash the news with front-page, heavy-type, large-font headlines.

“And the father of the chapel, you'll talk to him?”

Don nodded. It was not a meeting he was looking forwards to. The man was obstinate, and more negative than one of Hector's contact sheets. “Aye, I'll speak to him. Just pray he doesn't call a strike over some wee procedural error . . .” He saw McAllister's eyebrows shoot up. “Revenge for being questioned like a criminal.”

The chip shop was a few doors away from the pub. They ended the evening walking back across the bridge, not saying much, eating, scalding their fingers on the hot chips and fish batter, glad of the company. And for once, neither of them stumbled home to their respective beds drunk or hungry.

•   •   •

The same evening, Rob met up with Frankie Urquhart for a game of billiards. Thinking to take Frankie's mind off his mother's death, he had invited him for a game. The first game Rob won by a large margin. And the second.

“Sorry, I can't concentrate.” Frankie was setting up for another, then changed his mind. They took a seat to watch a game on a neighboring table—a tight game between a local and a man from Elgin, who was good, very good. As the balls clacked and spun, Frankie, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the players, said again, “Have you heard any more about—you know?”

Rob's silence before attempting a casual “Not much” alerted him.

“Tell me what you heard. I have a right to know who killed my mother.”

“It's ridiculous.” Rob was tossing a cube of chalk, worn to almost a hole in the middle, from hand to hand. He had a feeling he shouldn't be telling Frankie this.

“So you
have
heard something?”

“Not really, it's just that the bottle of . . . the bottle might have come from the
Gazette
print room.”

Rob knew he was right when Frankie burst out, “Alan Fordyce!”

The yell put the Elgin player off his shot. He turned and growled, “You! Shut yer bloody trap!” He turned back to his opponent. “I'm taking that shot again.”

“No, you're no',” his opponent replied, and his pals—for this was their town, their billiard hall—rose from their seats.

Rob grabbed Frankie's arm and pulled him towards the steps, keeping hold of him as they came out into the dark and damp of a desolate Thursday night where only the drunk could withstand the wind and rain.

“Back to my house.”

Margaret McLean was still up though it was past ten o'clock. She went into the kitchen; saw the state of the “boys,” as she always called them. They were wet and cold and shaken. She handed each of them a towel. “Whisky, Frankie? Gin?”

“Cocoa for me,” Rob answered, “and I'll make it.”

“Frankie, telephone your father. Tell him where you are.” Margaret was giving an order, not a request. Even though Frankie was twenty-three and hadn't had to inform his father of his whereabouts in seven years, he did as he was told.

When they were by the fire in the sitting room, it seemed natural for Margaret to join them. It was a good move, Rob thought later. His mother had a way of calming people. And her contribution to the conversation made sense.

Rob told them both about the bottle coming from the print room. He told them of the fingerprints and whose they were, found on the broken pieces. He managed throughout the telling to avoid the word
acid
. He ended with the question, “So why did you get so het up over Alan Fordyce?”

“He used to be in our team, but ma dad sacked him for dirty play.”

Rob considered this. To be thrown off the team for dirty play in a game as rough as shinty would be hard.

Frankie continued, “He swore revenge on Dad. Then he joined the Glen Achilty team. Every game we've met since, he's been right vicious.”

“Do I know him?” Rob asked. He couldn't put a face to the name.

“He's thon skinny wee runt, the one they call ‘Ferret.' ”

“He's short, nearly as wee as Hector.”

“It didn't take height or strength for the attack on Nurse Urquhart,” Margaret pointed out. “Sorry, Frankie—I shouldn't have mentioned that.”

“No, I prefer people to speak to me normally. Many people can't even look me in the eye. My mother's death is embarrassing enough, but to be a victim of . . .”

“It's not that people don't care,” Margaret said. “It's because they're scared of death.” At their age, and having missed the war, the young men had little experience of death.

Frankie left shortly after. Margaret insisted Rob give him a lift in his father's car. When Rob returned, his mother was still up.

“Do you believe it could be this lad from the
Gazette
?” she asked.

“Not really.” Rob was having a hard time accepting that anyone would throw acid, especially over a shinty competition.

“The acid hit Nurse Urquhart in the throat, but it was probably meant for her face. If this fellow is as small as you say, it makes sense.” They knew the nurse had been a tall woman, perhaps five foot eight.

“I know, Mum, but it's all so . . .”

“Horrible, nasty, vicious . . .”

“Deadly.” Rob said what he had not wanted to say. “It killed her.”

•   •   •

It took three days—and one day after the
Gazette
came out with the information about sulfuric acid, but nothing about a bottle being missing from the print room—before another anonymous letter was delivered to the
Gazette
. This time the letter came in the post. A similar letter was posted to the police.

The accusation was enigmatic but grammatical, the vocabulary and spelling correct.

ASK THAT SELF-RIGHTEOUS MAN ON THE GAZETTE ABOUT HIS WIFE AND THE NURSE.

Joanne was in the reporters' room when she opened the letter. It was in among the other letters addressed to the
Gazette
—letters usually to the editor complaining about anything from the council to the obituaries to the state of the Commonwealth, and usually innocuous, occasionally funny or libelous.

This letter was on cheap white unlined paper, in a brown envelope, posted, not hand delivered. The message she read once to herself. She shuddered. She loathed anonymous messages of any kind.

She read it a second time—out loud to the others.

“All we need to work out is who is ‘self-righteous,' ” Rob said.

“There's more than one self-righteous man on the
Gazette,
” Don pointed out.

Mal Forbes was Joanne's candidate. Then she felt her cheeks warm.
Me too, I can be a wee bit self-righteous—though goodness knows I've no reason to be.
Joanne's prejudice was women who wore too much makeup or who started sentences with “I'm no gossip but . . .” She would also admit to being self-righteous about people who never read and never took an interest in anything outside small-town life.

“It's nothing like the other letters,” Joanne pointed out. “Different notepaper, posted—not hand delivered.”

“Who is married and self-righteous?” Rob asked.

“Mal Forbes,” Joanne muttered. Only Rob heard and nudged her with his elbow, whispering, “Meow.”

“The father of the chapel lives across the street from where the attack on Nurse Urquhart took place,” Don told them, not sharing his thought that the man was the most self-righteous person he'd ever worked with. “His fingerprint is also on the bottle . . .”

“Never.” McAllister thought the man too much of a worthy Dickensian character to be a suspect.

“Two suspects and both from the
Gazette,
” Rob said. “Unbelievable.”

“No, laddie, for many only too believable.” Don knew how many loved to hate their local paper. He knew how many believed they could do the job much better than the professionals, because so many over the years had told him so.

“Someone threw the acid. Why couldn't that someone be one of us?” Joanne's observation was correct. And depressing—much like the low-level cloud that came up that morning, enveloping the east coast; hanging over the firths, moors, and mountains; enveloping the town in shades of pewter for the next three days.

With both printers released without charge, the matter did not go away. Theories as to the culprit abounded, theories involving strangers, neighbors, family, and friends. Even a visiting missionary seconded to the Dalneigh Church was suspected, but only because he was a foreigner from Nigeria and different. All the speculation was accompanied by an awareness of horror: the knowledge of how damaging, indeed fatal, acid could be; images of the scarred and the maimed and the dying haunting many—mostly women; the smell of burnt flesh haunting others—mostly survivors from two world wars. This was a death that touched all.