The Trinity (9 page)

“I coulda shot a nigger,” Hinckley says, “no problem.”

“In due time, my son, in due time,” Crowley replies. “We will build this temple one stone at a time.

“And Lee,” the priest says to Rodgers via the rearview mirror, seeing only Rodgers’s silhouette and the whites of his eyes in the darkened back seat, “as a priest, I can forgive you. The Church has not taken that away from me, and our white god, Odin, is smiling upon you, my son. God is smiling.”

They return to Crowley’s cottage for more drinking. The priest and Brad continually pat Rodgers on the back and compliment his aim, his timing, and his level head. By the time the evening is over, Rodgers no longer thinks of himself as a murderer. He is a soldier.

After midnight, the priest returns the pair to the road just down from the base entrance, knowing now that they won’t tell a soul about their activity, or about their friendship.

He is the epitome of an almost dignified Scot, tall and thin, a full head of black hair imperceptibly sprinkled with gray. His face is adorned with pale blue, almost gray eyes and a long aquiline nose on a still longer and red face. Constable Robertson is the lone representative of the Tayside Police in Lutherkirk—a small village with a population of about 300—and has been for nearly twenty years. It has always been his dream to be the man responsible for law enforcement in his native village, and the circumstances in his days upon the conclusion of his police training allowed that to happen for him at a young age.

His is basically a 9 to 5 job, Monday through Friday, and much of his time is spent sitting in his small, one-room storefront office along High Street. His office is very simple, consisting of a solitary desk, a teletype machine, a coat and hat rack, a thin and shallow jail cell, a small refrigerator, and a hotplate for boiling tea on a small table in front of the large picture window, surrounded by a collection of donated mugs used by his frequent visitors, citizens of the village who constantly pop in to say hello.

His day consists of writing his daily reports or reading the police bulletins from across the United Kingdom. He constantly glances out the front window, staring out into the street in case some burglar or murderer from England, one of the U.K.’s most wanted, is passing through.

But all he sees are the same faces and forms he grew up with, people he knows at a glance. And then there are the young Americans from the base, walking along the same sidewalk as the citizens of Lutherkirk but living in a different world, rarely socializing with the Scottish people, except for times spent in pubs or shops. The American faces are never permanent. A face that becomes familiar soon disappears and is replaced by a similar looking young man, with the same sort of homogenous appearance: short hair, blue jeans and tennis shoes. The Americans from the nearby base have been part of the Lutherkirk landscape for all save the very early years of his life.

There is little crime in Lutherkirk, and if things at one of the pubs get out of hand or if a husband gets physical with his wife, the citizens won’t hesitate to call the constable at any hour of the night, or even knock on his door, as he lives just a block from his office.

A neighbor of the Beasleys heard their window break. She is an older widow, distrustful of the world—especially Americans, and especially black Americans. She telephones Robertson upon hearing the broken glass, upon hearing the baby scream. She suspects some sort of domestic disturbance, not an act of racist intimidation.

Robertson hangs up the phone and sleepily dons his uniform from the previous day, grabbing his fluorescent orange raincoat with the word POLICE emblazoned on the back. The night damp and frosty, he kisses his wife’s red and puffy and barely awake face and promises a quick return.

He walks from one side of High Street to the next, passing his still and sleepy office. The empty street is illuminated by sporadic streetlamps whose lights can be seen twinkling in the moisture-laden air through the low fog that provides a blanket over the entire village.

“Bollocks,” he says to himself. His hands are thrust deep into his trouser pockets, the collar of his raincoat turned up to protect his ears as he walks almost hurriedly in his awkward gait, slightly bowlegged with his right foot angling out.   “Nearly bleeping fucking Christmas and I’ve got to tend to some damn Yanks.”

The Americans don’t really bother Robertson in the political sense, but he grows irritated when he has to police them. He is paid for by the Tayside government, not the U.S. He feels the Americans that live and wander and drink off base are like children ignored by their parents and left without a babysitter: apt to do treacherous and irresponsible things.

Robertson’s approach to the Beasley house is telegraphed by his shoes walking on broken glass and the sound of a baby crying heard through the jagged hole in the living room window. The house is dark save a light from a small lamp on the kitchen table, where Beasley and his wife sit. The wife is trying to breastfeed the baby but the baby can’t and won’t and all it does is continue to wail quite strongly for such a new child.

Robertson whispers loudly through the broken window, though the immediate neighbors are quite awake. “You there,” he says, indicating Beasley with a point and a wave of his hand intended to bring him outside.

Robertson already knows that a black couple lives in the house, a semi-detached property belonging to his wife’s uncle, who owned many of the properties rented to the Americans in the area, all furnished meagerly in the thrifty Scottish fashion with furniture bought at estate sales and resale shops. Robertson notes the tattered and worn upholstery. He rolls his eyes and thinks of his wife’s uncle, the cheap bastard.

Beasley comes outside in his stocking feet, wearing Navy sweatpants and a Navy sweatshirt. He doesn’t look at Robertson but keeps his head down as he tries to step between the shards of glass. He hands Robertson the rock and the note before the constable can inquire into the situation. Robertson squints his eyes and reads the note from the light of the kitchen.

Immediately he thinks of the scruffy looking youths he sees loitering around the city center on his shopping trips to Dundee: young and small and thin men wearing boots and black leather jackets and shaved heads with iron crosses around their necks. He recalls that they’re called skinheads, and he fears their influence has spread north to his quiet piece of the Earth. He suspects nothing different and he asks Beasley some obvious questions.

“Any idea who did this?”

Beasley shakes his head while sniffing his nose. His eyes are teary. The tears start to freeze at the corners of his eyes.

“No enemies, no friends on the base that you’ve rubbed the wrong way?” Robertson continues while staring into the night and through the broken window at the quiet girl trying to nurse a still crying baby.

Beasley shakes his head. Robertson believes he knows nothing. The constable turns his head slowly, nearly 360 degrees, in the hope of seeing a bald-headed leather-clad youth in combat boots traipsing through his village, hoping to solve this crime, this breach of a quiet and almost holy night, this trespass against a young and seemingly harmless family just minding their business.

Robertson continues. His questions are over. This is the first crime he will have to solve where the perpetrator is not some familiar drunk or some abusive husband. “Look,” he says, “I’ll phone this friend of mine straight away to board up this window, and if you think of anything, you know, anything that might seem relevant to the matter at hand, call me right away.”

Beasley nods, sniffles, the tip of his nose growing numb but he doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel anything but despair starting to be replaced with anger.

He looks at Robertson, seems to notice him for the first time. “When I know who did it, I’ll kill ’em, jail or no jail, Navy or no Navy.”

Robertson nods and understands. Anger and vengeance transcend borders and oceans. “Not to worry, lad. I’m on it straight away, and,” he adds, “if you or the lass need anything, for yourselves or the baby, you call me. I can be reached twenty-four hours a day.” He hands Beasley his business card; he has written his home phone number and address on the back.

Robertson feels sorry for the young sailor, and Robertson is not usually sympathetic. His years of mundane police work have made him sort of callous, but the proximity to Christmas, the new baby and Beasley’s obvious youth has touched him. He wants to reach out to this young American.

But Beasley spurns him. “We don’t need anybody.” He walks inside and Robertson watches him put a blanket around his wife, still sitting at the kitchen table.

Robertson walks the few blocks back to his office and turns on the hotplate upon his arrival. Tea is definitely in order. He telephones and rouses out of bed an acquaintance in the neighboring village to patch up the window in the Beasley house, and then he telephones the sergeant on duty in Dundee, at the headquarters of the Tayside Police. The sergeant is puzzled; that sort of crime doesn’t happen in the hinterlands of their region.

“Write a report and send it in,” he tells Robertson. “Looks like you’ll have a wee bit of police work for a change,” he adds sarcastically.

Robertson puts his feet on the desk and waits for the water to boil. He notes the time, not quite 4 a.m. Daylight is still six hours away here in the land as far north as Alaska.

The kettle whistles and he makes his tea, lots of milk and lots of sugar. He plugs in his newly requisitioned electric typewriter and feeds the form used for reporting incidents. He then realizes this is the first crime he will have to try to solve, to find clues and sort them out. He dashes out of the office, leaving the light on and the door unlocked and his hat still on top of the coat rack. He runs to the Beasley house.

“I need the rock and the note,” he tells Frank. “It’s evidence.” He takes the items back to his one-room station. He is not sure what to do with them, but they somehow seem significant.

He finishes his cup of tea and makes another and notes the milkman driving down High Street, starting his day. Robertson feels somehow important; he is the one responsible for maintaining the routine of the village, and an interloper has intruded and infringed upon the tranquility.

He thinks about returning home to catch a few more hours of sleep, waking up to a nice breakfast, sausage maybe, black pudding, a fried egg, but decides against it. He will wait until the detective bureau in Dundee reports in for the day and he will telephone them and ask them to look at his evidence and dust it for fingerprints.

He sits at his desk and taps his fingers, waiting to begin.

The flight from London to Aberdeen is short, perhaps an hour and a little more. The plane is small but crowded. Chris is starting to feel the fatigue of travel and he pays little attention to the other passengers, just listens to the accents of the crew and others talking, his ears sensitive to the differences of inflection from his own native tongue.

He barely looks out the window as the plane flies above the clouds and then abruptly descends again as it approaches Aberdeen.

He expects a small airport and he is not mistaken. The passengers disembark on the runway and are forced to walk across the runway to the terminal. Chris stares at the overcast Scottish late morning sky and he sees many smooth and green low hills with clusters of naked trees and off to the distance, granite colored stone buildings, which he assumes is the start of the city of Aberdeen.

He collects his luggage and walks out of the terminal to a line of taxis waiting outside. He approaches the nearest one and interrupts a driver reading a tabloid-like newspaper. Chris hops in the back seat of the small car, a make of car that he’s never heard of or seen, a Lada. He notes the steering wheel on the right side of the car.

“Lutherkirk,” Chris says, his orders clutched in his hands. He retrieves his cigarettes from his sock. It is the last of his American cigarettes that he bought in New York. The pack is nearly empty and soggy from the sweat of his skin and the warmth of his sock.

“Aye,” the cab driver says. He is a short, heavy man with black rimmed glasses, longish, greasy gray hair, a red nose and a pockmarked face. “Are ya going to the base?”

Chris can’t understand a word the driver says. It will be a few weeks before he can tune his ear to the Scottish brogue, much different from the English accent he expected to be universal across the island of Britain.