The Wicker Tree (11 page)

Steve pointed to a cubicle off to the right of a passageway, murmuring that he'd been asked to wait outside. But Delia wanted to make contact with Beth as soon as possible and was convinced no 'please wait outside' request could apply to her. She therefore invaded the cubicle just as a nurse was completing putting a dressing on Beth's upper thigh. A young woman doctor was there too.

'D'you wear a bikini?' she was asking Beth.

'Never have. Why?' asked Beth.

'It could leave a bit of a scar,' said the doctor.

'My vanity doesn't extend to my butt,' laughed Beth, not noticing Delia standing just inside the cubicle.

Beth thanked the doctor and the nurse, wondering why no one had yet mentioned insurance or credit cards.

'Take this to the pharmacy for your medication,' said the doctor.

'Try and keep the dressing dry,' added the nurse.

And they were gone. It was then that Beth saw Delia smiling sympathetically at her.

'My dear Beth. You have been in the wars. I'm so relieved it is nothing worse than, as Steve puts it, a bite in your butt.'

'Thank you so much for coming, Delia.' Beth was really grateful. Some of these Scottish people were so kind and thoughtful. Others were – well you'd find them in Texas too. She knew that, and added: 'Terry, our teacher, said there'd be days like this.'

Beth had slipped on her clothes while Delia went to find Steve. On their return she was delving in her handbag for her credit cards.

'So where do we pay?' she asked.

'Pay? You don't pay. No one pays,' Delia told her. 'Now listen you two. Lachlan has this terrific idea. We want you to come home with us. We have some wonderful raw material for your mission. You never saw as many heathens as we have at Tressock, our place on the Borders. Lachlan, for one.'

'Lachlan is a heathen?' Beth was astonished.

'Lachlan's religion is music,' said Delia. 'If he weren't the chairman of a big company he would like to have written an oratorio like Handel. Call him agnostic if you like. Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism are all one to him – manifestations of the Life Force. Christianity too of course. But, as I said, you'll find better missionary material within twenty miles of our home than in Papua New Guinea. Not like the lot you saw this morning. Nice people. People who probably deserve to be saved – starting with Lachlan. Me too perhaps.'

'Sounds good to me. No mad dogs?' asked Steve.

'Friendly dogs,' smiled Delia. 'We specialise in horses actually, Steve. Beautiful horses. Do come. We'll invite the whole of Tressock. Our little town.'

But Delia could see that Beth was unconvinced. She wondered whether the girl had a bit of a martyr complex and really wanted to suffer for her cause.

'You and Lachlan are both just so sweet to think of doing that,' said Beth without a great deal of conviction. 'But right now I think I'd feel I was running away from the challenge right here in Glasgow. Don't you, Steve?'

'No I don't. To be honest with you I figure a country soul is as good as a city soul any day. Let's go save some.'

'But Steve, those poor city folks… OK so they called us Jesus freaks… but we haven't hardly started…'

'Those city folks just hated our guts as soon as they saw us. A soul is a soul, Beth. Now maybe we got a real chance to save some, thanks to our friends here.'

'Steve's right, Beth,' added Delia. 'Our people may be a bunch of heathens, but they'll hear you out, that I promise you. But we'd like to take you home with us tomorrow – quite early.'

Beth managed a wan smile at them both. Then suddenly her usual ebullience reasserted itself.

'OK, OK!' she cried. 'I'm being obsessive. You guys are so kind.'

And suddenly she was hugging a rather startled Delia and giving a pleased and relieved Steve a kiss.

THEIR DEPARTURE FROM Glasgow next morning was, as a result of their hosts' anxiety to get home as soon as possible, rather hectic. Beth was starting to see the virtue in the small amount of luggage she had been allowed. They took a limo to the airport to say goodbye to the Redeemers Choir, who were heading off to Austria to give another concert, this time with the Vienna Boys' Choir.

At the airport, the Morrisons' Rolls Royce awaited them. While Lachlan was showing Beth a review of the concert in the
Scotsman
newspaper and Delia was supervising Beame in the stowing away of the luggage, Steve found himself examining the car. He had assumed it was a Rolls Royce, but the silvery lady on the radiator looked wrong. There were enough Rolls Royces around Dallas for him to be familiar with the classic radiator and the winged lady leaning forever into the wind. This lady seemed to be rising from a silver stream. Lachlan noticed him examining the little effigy and smiled.

'You're very observant, Steve,' he said.

Beame came forward to elaborate.

'Normally, sir, that figure would be the Spirit of Ecstasy,' he said. 'That's what the Rolls Royce people like to call her. But this here is our Goddess Sulis. The Laird,' he nodded towards Lachlan, 'had her made special.'

'Sulis is our Celtic name for her,' added Lachlan. 'The Romans, when they were here, called her Minerva. She doesn't suffer fools gladly. Among her many roles, she is the goddess of the bright, intelligent people we like to think we are.'

The car threaded its way through the city of Glasgow before entering rich farmland as they headed south east.

For Beth, the rolling hills and woodlands of Scotland on that sunny day were like a fairyland revealed. It was the kind of landscape the Disney people had used in heart-warming movies with the likes of Julie Andrews singing her great British heart out. Little sheep dotted around small fields on either side of the narrow, hedge-lined roads on which undersized cars sped along as if racing against the clock. The greenness of everything was broken only by brilliant white clumps of early May blossom.

The air was so clear after the showers of the previous night that as every prospect revealed itself, it was like the Lord had suddenly given Beth the power to see all the way to what her camera's guide called infinity. Whatever that turned out to be. Of course Beth knew it was just a camera term, but she liked to think it was somewhere like the end of the Yellow Brick Road. And if, come to think of it, Lachlan and Beame were almost as weird as the Lion and the Tin Man, they certainly seemed just as friendly. While Delia, who sometimes looked as if she could play the Wicked Witch of the West quite convincingly, nevertheless smiled and smiled and smiled as if she knew the best joke in the world but wasn't telling.

They talked first about the concert and Beth's voice. Lachlan wanted to know how she had trained it and why she had chosen to change the way she used her voice so radically. Beth explained how it had dawned on her only slowly how much bigger her voice was than the tasks it had been given. She started listening, at home, to recordings of great singers like Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland and buying the scores of operas she liked.

'One day we were doing a gig some place, I think it was Kansas City,' she recounted. 'At the end the kids screamed for more. So I thought let's give them that great song Carmen sings in the tobacco factory. I put aside the mike and told the guys to kill the sound system. And I gotta admit I sang it real sexy – well that is what it is. The reaction was awesome. At first there was a minute of total silence. Then they just roared. Wanted me to do it again. But my dad, who was managing me at the time, he had them kill the show lights, put on the house lights and led me off the stage. He just hated it. Scared the hell out of him.'

'A voice like that is a gift for the gods,' said Lachlan with a sigh.

'The Lord God gave me my voice, that's for sure,' said Beth. 'You talk about gods – plural. Are you really a heathen like Delia said? You're kidding us. Don't you think they're kidding us, Steve?'

'He must know what he is, Beth,' laughed Steve. 'Talkin' of voices, what about yours, sir? That's some sound you've got there. I thought that Hallelujah thing you sang with your Glee Club – wow – that was awesome too.'

Lachlan was hunting for a cd on a rack inside his fumed oak music centre.

'Don't start him,' complained Delia, but Lachlan was already inserting the disc.

'These are a couple of our Scottish songs. They were written by someone you might call a heathen. We'd call him a pagan,' said Lachlan. Both Steve and Beth recognised the songs instantly, and the voice. It was Lachlan himself singing 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew' and then 'The Homebody's Song'. But he had the volume turned fairly low and talked with them while the cd was playing.

'These old folk songs. In a way they're our hymns, our anthems, our spirituals,' he said. 'Because they celebrate life.' Lachlan paused so they could hear the chorus, turning up the volume.

'She jumped into bed boys, making no alarm,

Thinking that a drover lad could do her no harm

And she wished the short night

Had been seven years long.'

'Really Lachlan!' said Delia. 'Don't you think that's a bit raunchy for our young Redeemers?'

Beth laughed. Now was not the time to preach. With luck, if these folk kept their promises, there'd be plenty of time for that later.

'The Devil has all the best tunes, they always say,' she declared politely.

IT WAS AN unusually bright spring morning in Tressock when the telephone started to ring inside the Police Station for the third time since nine o'clock, its normal opening time. It went on ringing as one of the blinds was pulled up and the bleary face of Orlando peered out at the world. He was wearing a terry towel bathrobe and made his way unsteadily to his desk to answer the telephone.

'Tressock Police Station,' he croaked and then held the phone well away from his face as if he was hoping to avoid the person at the other end.

The severe voice of Detective Sergeant Murdo Campbell reminded him of the time of day and the fact that he had failed to answer three previous calls and that his mobile appeared to be switched off. Orlando visibly pulled himself together, painfully straightening his body from a stoop to standing more or less at attention.

'Morning to you DS Campbell!' Orlando just managed to sound crisp and welcoming of this unexpected call. 'I haven't heard the telephone ringing. Not repeatedly. Not at all. Must be a problem at the exchange. I'll report it. As for mobile phones. They don't work too well down here and that's a fact. Sir Lachlan, the big cheese up at the Castle, doesn't like seeing those booster towers around here. This place is a wee bit feudal. Not so much Shangri-La, more Middle Earth…'

'Not so much what as what?' bellowed DS Campbell, startling Mrs Menzies who was just letting herself in to start one of her futile attacks on the Police Station's grime of ages. 'You're making no sense laddie,' the sergeant was still shouting, 'have you gone native down there or what?'

'Just the way a source I was interviewing last night described this community, DS Campbell,' replied Orlando, managing to sound quite calm. 'It'll all be in my next report. Anyway, this was your call. How can I help?'

Campbell's voice had returned to normal. He was inquiring about certain missing persons.

'Tad and Lucy Mae? Sound like Americans,' mused Orlando, spotting their names among the mostly young people listed alphabetically with their pictures and ages on the back of the door. Lucy Mae stood out. A beautiful girl with flame red hair.

'What would Yanks be doing here?' grumbled Mrs Menzies loudly. 'Unless it's to come and see the Willies Walk? Disgusting, I call it!'

She habitually and shamelessly eavesdropped. But hitherto Orlando had been tolerant of her. This time he lifted a heavy stapler from his desk, waving it as if about to throw it at her.

'Och, you wouldna?' she squeaked and fled into the bed-sitting room.

'Who the hell's that? DC Furioso?' DS Campbell could be heard shouting, for Orlando had put down the phone in order to shut Mrs Menzies into the bed-sitting room.

'That was Mrs Menzies, my cleaner,' he now replied, as calmly as he could. 'She's about 109 and slightly crazy. But she knows everybody and can be a useful source. That's the only reason I haven't got rid of her. Yes, those two you mentioned are on my list. I'll make enquiries. As for the witchcraft thing. It's tricky. As you probably know, a few people all over the country are involved in Wikka. A kind of pagan revival. Its all on the web and quite harmless. I've raised it with people here and none of them have ever heard of it, and I believe them. But I do sense that there really is something else going on that I can't yet identify. What it needs, as you and DI McFadden said before, is solid police work, elimination of suspects, following up all leads, and that's what it is getting. I was interviewing someone last night who may turn out to be a very good source. It was necessary to at first gain her confidence. Pretty soon I think she'll talk.'

There was a squawking sound from the detective sergeant that Mrs Menzies couldn't decipher, close though her ear was to the bed-sitting room door. What she did hear quite clearly was this:

'I know what you're saying. They want some results soonest. Leave it with me.'

HALFWAY THROUGH THEIR journey to this small town called Tressock, which Lachlan spoke of as if he owned it, Beth was surprised to see the countryside interrupted by a huge industrial complex; somehow not the sort of thing you expected to find in this corner of little old historic Europe. Armed police, the first she'd seen since they'd left the airport, stood outside the gates of what a sign proclaimed as the Nuada Nuclear Power Station. Nuclear! That was a shock. Where Beth came from, you could be Republican, Born Again, a Member of the Silver Ring Thing, anathematise Charles Darwin and still be quite green when it came to nuclear power.

Beth and Steve, therefore, exchanged a surprised glance, but said nothing because Lachlan was being saluted by one of the police, who seemed to want to hold traffic so that the Rolls could enter the plant. Lachlan wound down the window and leant out to speak to the cop.