Thunder Bay

by Douglas Skelton

  Lennox sat back, lifted a dagger-shaped letter opener he kept on his desk, even though there were very few envelopes to slit open these days, and twirled it in both hands. This was his habit whenever he wasn’t poking at the keyboard, as if his hands were so restless they simply had to do something. ‘So what you saying, Becks?’

  She took a breath. ‘I think I need to be over there.’

  His body language had formed ‘No’ before she’d completed her short sentence. ‘I can’t afford to send you over there,’ he said. ‘I need you here. You can do ten stories in the time it would take to get one.’

  A story’s not a story unless it can be done on the phone. That was the pronouncement of one of the nimrods sent up from London to tell the staff they were doing everything wrong. It was during her first year on the job but she knew it was bollocks as soon the words came out of his mouth. The thing was, she felt even he didn’t believe it. It was merely the company line.

  ‘Barry . . .’ she began.

  ‘Becks,’ he interrupted, ‘you’re not Lois Lane and we’re not the Daily Planet. You’re not going to go over there and solve this mystery . . .’

  ‘I don’t expect to. I just feel I can get people to talk if I’m meeting them face-to-face. You know I’m good at that.’ A slight incline of his head told her he was forced to agree. ‘So think about this—where’s this Roddie Drummond character been for fifteen years? What’s he been doing? How does he feel about going back home after all this time, with a cloud still over his head? What happened back then? And we’ll get more than one story out of it. I promise you we’ll get a front page splash and a feature piece right off the bat. And who knows what else I’ll trip over. But I need to be there to do that. Some things you can’t do on the phone.’

  He dropped the letter opener on the desk and stared at her. She heard his breath exhale as he considered her speech, which, given it was delivered off the top of her head, was a good one. She was bound to have won him over but she hit him with one final blow.

  ‘And we’re in on this at the beginning, Barry. It’s an exclusive. The P&J, the West Highland Free Press, The Courier, even the dailies won’t have a sniff of this. Not yet. But we need to move on it.’

  She had gambled this would appeal to the old-fashioned newspaperman that she hoped still lived inside him. An exclusive. A chance to splash something that no other newspaper had. Journalistic pride. She thrilled at the possibilities. But she had another motive to get to Stoirm. One she wasn’t sharing that with her editor. It was personal.

  He shook his head. ‘Can’t swing it, Becks, you know that. See what you can get on the phone. If it’s that exclusive then you don’t need to be there.’

  Damn it, she thought.

  He turned his attention to his monitor once again and she knew she was beaten. Disappointed, she turned away, then a new thought struck her. ‘Did you hear from Yvonne?’ Yvonne Adams, the only other journalist on the Chronicle team now. She was at court for Greg Pullman’s sentencing.

  Lennox didn’t look up from the monitor. ‘He got ten years, banned from driving and a ten grand fine.’

  Rebecca left his office, smiling. That was something, at least.

  * * *

  Her mobile beeped just as she was putting the finishing touches to the Maeve Gallagher piece. She had gone straight for the heart, as befitted the story. Even so, she didn’t fool herself that this was news. In university she’d been taught the adage, attributed to some long dead press baron, that the news was something that someone, somewhere, didn’t want printed. Everything else was advertising. It could be argued, she supposed, that Greg Pullman wouldn’t want this printed, but he had other things on his mind now. What it boiled down to was voyeurism. As much as she sympathised with the bereaved mother, this was a chance for the reader to enjoy someone else’s pain. Rebecca knew she was being hard on readers but that was the way it was. And yet, she provided the suds for this particular soap opera. She did her job because that was what she was paid for, it was what she was good at, but stories like this were not what drew her into journalism.

  She scanned her words as she answered her mobile without checking the caller display. Her heart sank when she heard Simon’s voice.

  ‘It’s me.’

  She contemplated simply disconnecting, but she didn’t. She couldn’t be that hard, even though she’d made it clear to Simon that it was over.

  ‘Becks?’

  ‘I’m here.’ Her voice sounded strained, even to her.

  ‘I was wondering if you were free for a coffee, or lunch. Or something.’

  ‘Kind of busy, Simon. Working.’

  ‘Right.’ He sounded deflated and she thought to herself, what did he expect? ‘Yeah, sure, but . . . well . . . I was in the area and I just thought . . . well . . .’

  Rebecca looked around to ensure no one else was listening. Who would be, though? Yvonne was still out, Barry was hunched over his screen in his office, the reporters on the other titles, two per paper, were busy, the sole content manager was at the table at the far side making herself a coffee while the advertising department was based in another room.

  ‘Simon, look—it’s not a good idea, okay? You can’t keep calling me.’

  ‘I know, it’s just . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said, firmer than she meant it, so she deliberately softened her voice. ‘This has to stop. You know it has to stop.’

  ‘Becks, you know how I feel. You know I . . .’

  Don’t say it, she thought.

  ‘Love you.’

  And he says it.

  ‘I can’t let things just end, Becks.’

  ‘But they have ended, Simon.’

  ‘Maybe for you.’

  ‘Yes, maybe for me, but that’s still an ending.’

  There was a pause ‘It wasn’t my fault, Becks. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.’

  She could hear his voice beginning to waver and she couldn’t take it. She knew what had happened wasn’t his fault. She knew it wasn’t hers, either. It had simply happened. She certainly didn’t blame him but afterwards she had come to realise there was nothing between them. As the saying went, it wasn’t him, it was her. She didn’t know what she was looking for but she knew Simon wasn’t it. Not now.

  She didn’t say any of that, though.

  ‘Simon, please, let it go. There’s nothing to be said. Sorry, but I’m under the gun here. I’ve got to get back to work.’

  She hung up. She felt bad, but she couldn’t get into that discussion again. It had been six months since it had happened. She’d tried not to think about it too much, but his voice always brought it back and she couldn’t have that, not here, not in the office. She moved to the window and looked down into the street, scanned the cars parked on either side. Yup, there it was. Simon’s blue Audi. Simon was a solicitor based in Dingwall. It was possible he was down in Inverness at court but he had no reason to be out in the industrial units where the Chronicle had its office.

  She leaned against the wall beside the window and closed her eyes, blocking the memories. She hoped this wasn’t going to be a problem. She couldn’t let it become one.

  4

  If Rebecca had a guilty secret, it was that she was a fan of Robbie Williams. It wasn’t something she broadcast, he not being cool among the oh-so-cool twenty-somethings who were her peer group. He was on her iPod, swinging both ways, as she sat on the floor of her small flat, bound copies of the Highland Chronicle opened and spread out around her. She had liberated them from the file room before she’d left the office, sneaking them into her car without being seen. The digital archive only went back nine years and so there was nothing online about the Stoirm murder, hence the need for the bulky volumes containing every edition from the year of the murder and then the trial a few months after.

  They didn’t tell her much. The Chronicle reports were far from comprehensive—perhaps things weren’t much better in the good old days after all, although there was a very good in-dep
th feature on the case following the trial. To be fair, a murder like that, the first on the island for fifty years, was well covered by the dailies, and by the time the weekly title came out there wouldn’t have been much that was fresh. She found further reports on the websites of the dailies, but even their digital records from back then were patchy.

  She did uncover a lengthy entry on the case on a site detailing unsolved murders in Scotland but knew better than to accept what was there as gospel. Technically, the case was unsolved. Roddie Drummond had faced trial but was acquitted on a Not Proven verdict. It was a controversial issue in Scotland, the infamous third option for juries—‘that bastard verdict’, it was called, neither guilty nor not guilty. But an acquittal all the same.

  She hooked her glass of wine from the floor beside her and leaned against the settee. The A4 notepad on her lap was covered in spidery handwriting which was unreadable by anyone except herself, and sometimes not even then. She liked to scribble notes down, it made her feel closer to the material. She then let her eyes roam towards the open pages of newsprint and finally to the screen of her laptop. A grainy shot of Mhairi Sinclair, obviously scanned in from a newspaper, stared back at her. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. If it had hung loose it would have fallen to her shoulders, as straight as a waterfall.

  She had a child, the reports said. She was living with Roddie, although he was not the father. Rebecca flicked back through her handwritten notes. The father was another local man, Donnie Kerr. On her pad she’d written the words FIND HIM and underlined them. Twice.

  She stared at Mhairi’s eyes. The photo was in black and white, so she couldn’t see what colour they were. They looked dark. Dark and deep.

  What happened back then, Mhairi?

  Who killed you?

  Rebecca pulled the Chronicle’s trial report towards her and looked for the section detailing Mhairi’s final few minutes. Paramedics from the newly opened community hospital had responded to Roddie’s 999 call. Mhairi had been badly beaten. Rebecca had noted phrases like open-vault fracture, where the hair and scalp had come into contact with the brain, zygomatic and frontal sinus fractures, which meant she had been beaten so badly the bones around her eyes had been smashed, leaving her left eye bulging from the socket, Cushing’s triad, where arterial pressure had increased, probably due to swelling of the brain, while her respiration was irregular and pulse rate down. There were further deep lacerations and contusions where someone had compressed her throat. All of this was reported in the dry, emotionless manner of expert witnesses until the pathologist was questioned about the nature of the injuries. ‘It is my opinion that the individual who did this was suffering from deep and uncontrollable rage,’ he said. Naturally, defence counsel didn’t like that one bit and objected to the speculation, but the thought was already out there.

  The paramedics did what they could but they were fighting a losing battle and Mhairi died in the ambulance. She had regained consciousness once, while they were still in the cottage. Rebecca scanned the report, found the passage she was looking for, read it again:

  The Advocate Depute asked the witness: ‘And did the deceased say anything before she died?’

  The witness replied: ‘Yes. She asked after Sonya.’

  ‘Sonya being her one-year-old daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where was Sonya at the time?’

  ‘She was in her cot in the house. She was asleep.’

  ‘And the daughter was unharmed?’

  ‘She was perfectly fine.’

  The Advocate Depute then asked: ‘And did the deceased say anything else?’

  The witness replied: ‘She did.’

  ‘And would you tell the court what that was?’

  ‘She said “Thunder Bay”.’

  The paramedic was asked what she thought that meant and she explained that Thunder Bay was a well-known location on the west coast of Stoirm.

  The witness was then asked: ‘And what do you think she meant by that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  * * *

  Rebecca had printed THUNDER BAY in her notes and underlined those words too. Three times. Thunder Bay. She’d logged into Google Maps and zeroed in on it. There was only a satellite image, no ground-level view. It looked fairly remote, with what seemed like a dirt trail running from the roadway that ran the length of the island, although it was difficult to tell. It might’ve been a tarmac single-track road. Underneath her notes, she’d written one word: VISIT.

  If she was honest, she’d decided while she was speaking to Chaz that she would go to the island to follow the story. It didn’t really matter what Barry said. She had hoped he would see the importance of the story and let her go but it seemed any news instincts he might have once possessed were smothered by the need to satisfy the number crunchers and their spreadsheets. On one level Rebecca understood his position but her own instincts told her there was no way she could do it justice with a few phone calls.

  There was so much here. The murder fifteen years before. The enduring mystery. Roddie Drummond.

  And then there was Stoirm.

  The island on which her father had been born. The island he’d left when he was eighteen. The island to which he’d never returned. The island that had fascinated her since she’d first heard of it, even though she’d never visited.

  It had been one of the reasons she had been delighted to land the Chronicle job. Though Stoirm was a far-flung area of the paper’s circulation she had always hoped to be sent there, but so far the opportunity had never arisen.

  But now it had.

  Rebecca found her mum’s number on her phone and made the call. She only glanced at the clock on the wall as she listened to the dial tone. Ten o’clock. Mum would still be up. The phone continued to ring. She began to doubt herself. Maybe she had gone to bed. Or maybe she was out. Maybe . . .

  ‘Becca, what’s up?’

  Her mother’s voice sounded worried. Rebecca visualised Sandra Connolly sitting in her spacious kitchen in Milngavie. The sound of the TV in the sitting room reached her, some comedy show or other.

  ‘Nothing, Mum, why?’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘It’s ten o’clock, Mum.’

  ‘Still very late for a phone call.’

  Rebecca smiled to herself. Her mother hated the phone and wouldn’t even allow it in the living room. It was always in the hall, then, after some petitioning from her husband, in the kitchen. That was a victory for him. At least he could sit at the table to chat.

  ‘After all,’ said her mother, ‘I could be entertaining a gentleman caller.’

  Rebecca smiled. ‘You’re beyond the age of having gentlemen callers.’

  ‘I’m only fifty-two and that’s no age at all. Anyway, that’s very ageist of you. I thought we brought you up better than that. Even mums have needs, you know.’

  ‘Mums don’t have needs.’

  ‘Of course we do—how else do you think you got here?’

  Rebecca felt herself smile. She knew her mother was winding her up. ‘Behave yourself, Mum. You know Dad was the only one for you.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘Yes, that’s what he used to say too. And I hated it when he was right. It’s the man’s job to be wrong, all the time. So, why are you calling so late?’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, but this couldn’t wait. I’m heading to the island tomorrow.’

  There was a silence. When her mother spoke, Rebecca heard the familiar, guarded tone she always used when the subject came up. ‘Why?’

  ‘A story.’

  ‘What kind of story?’

  Rebecca told her.

  When she’d finished her brief outline, her mother spoke. ‘I don’t know anything about all that.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would. What I wanted to know was this: why did Dad never speak about the place?’

  Despite her pleas for stories from the island, her dad had said very littl
e about the place, except in passing. And further enquiries from her were adroitly averted. He had no photographs to show, nothing of his childhood. It was as if it wasn’t part of him.

  There was another silence at the other end of the line, filled only by the faint laughter from the TV. Rebecca made out Stephen Fry’s voice. When her mother still didn’t speak, she said, ‘Mum?’

  ‘He just didn’t,’ said her mother.

  ‘Not even to you?’

  ‘Not even to me.’

  Rebecca was surprised. She had meant it when she said that her father had been the only one for her mother. They weren’t merely married, they were connected. She’d never seen two people who cared for each other so much. She really thought that he would’ve shared something with her over the years. ‘But why?’

  A sigh. ‘Why do you need to know?’

  ‘Because it’s a part of him I don’t know about. I know the rest. Going to sea . . .’

  Her father’s voice: I went to sea to see the sea and once I’d seen it I came back again.

  ‘Then joining the police. But I don’t remember him ever once mentioning the island, apart from casually. I tried to get him to talk about it . . .’

  Daddy, tell me about the island.

  Nothing to tell, Becca.

  Can we go and see it?

  Nothing to see, Becca. Just a lot of grass and heather and some hills and a mountain. Nothing to interest a wee lassie like you.

  ‘. . . He just shut me down. Said it was all ancient history. Then he changed the subject.’

  Her mum gave out a slight laugh. ‘Yes, that was your dad. He didn’t like to talk about the island, you know that, not even with me.’

  ‘But he must’ve said something about it. You really don’t know why?’

  ‘I tried, Becca, many times, but he shut me down too. In the nicest possible way, as only your dad knew how. But it was still case closed, as far as he was concerned.’

  Rebecca had encountered that side of her father many times. He had a way of letting you know not to push too far without having to turn nasty. He’d laugh, or say something really stupid, then change the subject entirely.