A Small Death in the Great Glen

by A. D. Scott

  She watched, awestruck, as he left in a rush of scarves and gloves and motorbike jacket. “Is he your friend?” she asked Joanne.

  “Well, he’s a good ten years younger than me, and we work together, and I’m friends with his mother, but yes, he’s a friend.”

  “I know his dad,” Mhairi said. “He’s a nice man too. Not at all stuck-up.”

  “Oh really? Do you know him from the hotel?”

  “No, from here. He helped me out when I was in trouble. I saw him again this morning. He’s been right good to me.”

  Joanne was curious by nature. That would make her a good reporter. She also knew when not to ask questions. That would make her an even better reporter.

  “Mr. McLean helped me,” Mhairi continued. “Your sister and her husband the minister, they were kind to me, and Father Morrison, he helped me the most.” Joanne, clearly astonished, had no idea what Mhairi was talking about.

  “He, I mean Father Morrison, helped me to stay in a place where lassies like me have to stay when they’re no married and then they have their babies and the babies are adopted and they never see them again.” Mhairi continued speaking without pause, without breath, getting it all out before she changed the two-years-or-more habit of keeping her secrets nursed close to her heart. She needed to say this. Once only would be enough. Then she could go back to pretending.

  “Then I said no. I said I’ve changed my mind. And I was told I had to. I had to give up my baby when it was born. I ran away. Your sister’s husband took me in and I stayed with them for a whiley.”

  “That’s when I first met you.” Joanne smiled.

  “Aye, I was as big as a bus by then. Reverend Macdonald spoke to Father Morrison and he made it all right with the nuns at the home. The father, he said I didn’t have to, if I didn’t want to, and he said it was good that a baby knew its mother, and he made the adoption people go away, and he talked to my father, and he writes to me sometimes, just a wee note now and again, and he always asks after Rosemary, and he said he wished he had a mother like me, who kept her baby, because he never knew his own mother.”

  “Rosemary is your baby.” Joanne could think of very little to say.

  “Aye. Well, I know you know. At first my dad thought it best to pretend we adopted her. But that never fooled no one. Now, I’m not going to pretend anymore. I promised no to tell, that was the agreement, but I want a name on her birth certificate. It’s not right—father unknown, that’s not nice on her birth certificate. I’ll still keep it a secret but his name should be there. Mr. McLean is going to help me.”

  “Yes. I agree.” Joanne admired the girl’s bravery.

  “I don’t think her father will agree, though. He wanted nothing more to do with me after I fell in the family way. Nor with wee Rosemary. He’s never even seen her. Too feart of what folks will say. Feart his wife’ll find out, an’ all that.” She took a sip of cold coffee.

  Joanne watched the determined face and fierce eyes and was reminded of Celtic warrior women keeping the English Redcoats at bay.

  “But he said, Rosemary’s father that is, that if I kept pestering him, he would see to it that she was taken away from me. Mr. McLean says he can’t do that. And Mr. McLean said he has responsibilities to his child. But I don’t care about that, I don’t want his money. I like my job. Mrs. Watt is good to me and she knows about my situation and she says it doesn’t matter. My mother and father, they worship the wee lass. They’re real Christians. Not like some. And they’ve always stood up for me, unlike Mr. High and Mighty Findlay Grieg.”

  She caught the bus to the house. It had some funny name next to the door—Latin, Father Morrison had told her, but Mhairi always called it the Big House. She walked through the gloom of the rhododendrons emerging into the early afternoon light. She rang the bell and when the door opened, Father Morrison, in a soutane large enough to double as a tent, loomed over her. He bent down to her, wrapping his prehensile arms around her, almost lifting her off the doorstep in a hug. On tiptoes, laughing, wriggling, she exclaimed, “Father Morrison!” Hugging, touching, showing emotions, wasn’t the done thing in Mhairi’s way of life.

  “My dear, dear girl.” He put her down, stepped back, looked her up and down, smiling into her heart.

  “You look grand. Apples in your cheeks. And so grown up. Your mother and father must be right proud of you.”

  “You look just the same.” And he did. Still the same ginger giant, with the same sparse, see-through-to-the-scalp, sandy hair, the same ginger wire-brush hair on the backs of his hands and knuckles, with a smattering on and in his ears. She had a pig on the croft that had hair just like that, and she loved pigs, loved their great friendly nosy natures, just as she loved Father Morrison.

  “A cup of tea first, then all your news.”

  He strode to the back of the house calling his questions in his booming voice, over his shoulder as she trotted behind him.

  “How’s your mother? How’s your father? And how is wee Rosemary?”

  He put the kettle on the stove.

  “I keep all your letters; I love hearing about the wee lass. Is she as bonnie as you? You must get some pictures done.”

  Mhairi sat beaming as Father Morrison fussed around, searching for the tin with the shortbread, placing on the table the mismatched cups and saucers, instead of the best china—which he hated—putting the milk bottle out instead of using the jug, and finally pouring the tar he called tea, which Mhairi had acquired a taste for when she had stayed with the big bossy priest, who treated her as family and who had stood by her, giving her the encouragement and the courage to change her life.

  “And Mr. McLean, what did he say? Will he be able to sort it all out?”

  “Father”—Mhairi was laughing—“I’ll tell you all about it if you give me a chance. I can’t get a word in edgewise.”

  Father Morrison reached across and touched her gently on the head as though bestowing a benediction on the young woman whom he thought of so dearly.

  “You know how proud I am of you, don’t you?”

  “Aye, Father, I do. But I would never have found the courage to keep wee Rosemary if it wasn’t for you.” She beamed at him. “And I’d never ever have found the courage to stand up to thae nuns if it wasn’t for you!” She giggled at the memory.

  “A child should know his mother,” he stated simply.

  “I’m right sorry you never found your mother.”

  “Aye, well, what’s done is done.”

  “I know. But to never know your own mother, to be an orphan …”

  “In that orphanage …”

  She barely caught what he said but she heard the pain.

  “It was all a long time ago.” He recovered. “What matters is to forgive and get on with life. And now, dear child, I want to hear all the news about you and yours.”

  “I think Rosie’s finished teething. Well, she’s sleeping sound every night now.”

  And for the next hour, before Mhairi had to leave to catch the train home, they drank more tea, and reminisced, and laughed about the times they had had together when Mhairi was expecting, when she was in despair, and they laughed about the time when the nuns from the adoption agency came to collect the baby, and she was cowering in terror in the kitchen, with her coat on, hiding the baby under it, waiting to run out the back door, and he was holding them off at the front door, and they remembered when her parents came over from the west, and she told them she would never ever give Rosemary up, and Father Morrison persuading her mother, who didn’t need much persuasion, and her father, who needed even less when he had the wee thing, his first and only grandchild, in his arms, and they both—Father John Morrison and Miss Mhairi Mackinnon—agreed that those were heroic times, times to laugh about now that it was all over and wee Rosemary was settled with her mother and her family.

  “The birth certificate? Has that man agreed to his name on it?”

  “Mr. MacLean is seeing to all that,” Mhairi told him. �
�But he’d better agree, else Mrs. Grieg might find out what she married.”

  Don had heard that Jimmy McPhee was in Ross-shire, arranging the wedding of the eldest brother, Keith. Later that day, through the mysterious McLeod network that operated on a bar-to-bar basis, the word got through to Jimmy.

  “McAllister,” he barked into the phone. “Mr. McPhee … Fine, Jimmy, just the man. Uh-huh, aye … If you give me directions I’m sure I’ll find it. Tonight? Right-oh. Seven it is.”

  The drive to Ross-shire took McAllister a good hour and a half through the dark. In the beam of his headlights he spotted the caravans, the lorries, the ponies tethered to silver birch trees and, further down the river meadow, one bender much larger than the other three. He switched off his engine. The river-running, tree-rustling quiet lasted a fraction of a second before a chorus of fearsome-sounding dogs made him stay in the car, the door shut, waiting. Someone arrived.

  “McAllister?”

  He wound down the window.

  “Aye.”

  “Over here.”

  It was just above freezing outside, but inside the bent birchwood and tarred tarpaulin covering, the bender was spacious and warm from a potbelly stove. What with the carpets, the wireless in a walnut cabinet, the gramophone and crammed-full china display cabinet, McAllister thought he could be in an Edinburgh sitting room, though without windows. Jenny McPhee sat regally in her armchair, tea service at the ready.

  “Tea or a dram or both?”

  “Both.”

  He took off his coat and hat, settled down, comfortable with these strangers. They reminded him of the Romany families he had encountered in Spain and the south of France. He wouldn’t have blinked if someone had produced a guitar and struck up some flamenco and Jenny McPhee had joined in on castanets.

  “Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” McAllister started.

  “No,” interrupted Jenny. “We will listen, then … we’ll see.”

  “It’s about Karl, the Polish man who jumped ship in the harbor and who was rescued by your kinsmen.”

  “Now, did we say he was rescued by one of us?” Again Jenny broke into the conversation.

  “Who was supposedly rescued by your kinsmen.”

  “That’s the way.” Jenny laughed.

  Jimmy grinned at his mother, grinned at McAllister and sat back to enjoy the contest.

  “Karl, the Polish man who jumped ship and who was rescued from the river by persons unknown”—McAllister looked across at the blackcurrant eyes, received a nod and continued—“was aided and sheltered by a number of souls, identity also unknown, for a night or two; that part is unclear. A note was delivered to Peter Kowalski, by a boy, whose identity is also unknown, informing Peter of the fugitive’s plight, and his whereabouts, with instructions—”

  “Written in Polish by the man himself,” Jenny said, butting in again.

  “—with instructions on where to meet.”

  “By the canal bridge, on the road north, at eight in the morning, when it would still be dark,” Jenny informed him.

  “So.” McAllister paused; Jimmy topped up his glass. “So, if nothing is done or said, this Polish man Karl will be prosecuted and most likely found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of the boy—”

  At that, Jenny winced in shock. “Surely no?”

  “That’s what happened and those will be the charges, Mrs. McPhee.” McAllister spoke gently, seeing even in the dim how shocked his hostess was. “Unless something can be done to prove Karl couldn’t have done it.”

  “This changes things,” Jenny muttered, looking straight at her son.

  There was a hush in the room, if you could call this canvas-covered space a room. McAllister knew better than to ask for help.

  Jimmy McPhee spoke. “Or else it can be proved that someone else did this filthy crime.”

  There was a pause in the discussion as the three mulled over this thought.

  “You do understand our situation, Mr. McAllister.”

  It was Jenny who needlessly reminded him that the plain fact of being a Traveling family of the north—of anywhere in the country—made it almost impossible for them to be witnesses in front of a judge and jury, even more impossible when the accused was a foreigner.

  “As Jimmy says,” she pointed out, “the only thing for it is for the real murderer to be found.”

  And that, McAllister knew, was that.

  He next reached into his inside pocket and produced the envelope with the photograph and handed it to Jimmy. Jimmy stared at it, grinned and passed it on to his mother. She examined it, then handed it back to her son, who examined it again more closely. Neither of them commented; they were never in the business of handing out information, they just sat and bided their time.

  “My brother, Kenneth, second row on the right.”

  “I did wonder,” Jimmy said.

  “You knew him?”

  “Barely. But aye, I did see him around the boxing club. I was a boarder wi’ the brothers so I never got to know him properly.”

  “You heard what happened?”

  “Aye I did, an’ I’m right sorry.”

  With no introduction nor thought, McAllister went straight to his and his brother’s story.

  “In those days I thought I was the bee’s knees; working on a prestigious newspaper, new friends, breaking away from my background, going up in the world, my own man. I had my own single end, but I still had my dinner with the family most Sundays. I met up with my brother now and then for a Partick Thistle game. But the ten years’ difference was too much for me to have a real relationship with him.”

  Jenny and Jimmy McPhee listened without interrupting as McAllister told them the rest of his family’s story. But when McAllister reached the subject of the boxing club, Jimmy became restless.

  “My mother still has all his photos and cups, keeps them in her cabinet. That’s where I found this picture.” He looked down at it, although there was no need, it was imprinted on his brain.

  “Anyhow, he became silent, moody, wouldn’t get a job. But as I said, I really didn’t pay much notice.”

  He faltered.

  “A dram.” Jimmy placed a tumbler in his hand. McAllister tipped it down. “He came to see me one Saturday, late. I’d been out wi’ the lads and had had a few. All I was fit for was my bed. He tried to talk. I fell asleep on the couch. The next week, he gave it one more go. We met for a Partick match. I was on late shift, I had to go to work after the game, so I only had one beer. When he needed to talk, I let him down, too drunk. This time I was too sober, so again, he couldn’t say anything.”

  McAllister stopped, caught Jimmy’s intense gaze, took another gulp of whisky and continued. “He drowned in the Clyde. Jumped off the suspension bridge, the one from the Glasgow Green to the Gorbals. My mother has never believed he killed himself. But he did.”

  “What did you think?” Jenny asked.

  “I didn’t think, I was too shocked, too guilty. Later, I came to accept that he jumped,” McAllister replied. “I also realized that something made him kill himself, he was trying to tell me what, and I hadn’t taken time to listen.

  “Then months later, a story came through on the boys’ boxing club. It was to be closed and a presentation was to be held marking the end of an era. It wasn’t my job to cover local news, a cadet did that, but for some reason I went. I stood through the usual boring speeches and was about to sneak off when a mention was made of a former instructor, a pillar of the church and club so the speaker said. I didn’t catch the fellow’s name but I did catch the curse from the man behind me. He said, and I quote, ‘May he rot in hell, the bastard.’

  “A woman wheeshed him and he left. I tried to follow, but by the time I’d pushed my way out he was gone. I never did find that man.”

  “Tell me, John McAllister, what’s this about?” Jimmy queried.

  “An obsession of mine.” There was no joy in his self-mocking laugh. “Let’s just say I’m not overfond o
f priests.” Then he told them of the children and the hoodie crow.

  “They were playing a game, right?” Jenny asked. “The boy rang the doorbell, the door opened and they say he was lifted up by a hoodie crow, right?” Then Jenny thought, “Maybe they saw the idea of a hoodie crow.” She smiled at the skeptical face.

  “You’re too educated, McAllister. But think on it. The hoodie crow—the Baobhan sith to us Highland Travelers—can be an evil spirit.”

  “A crow that feasts on dead flesh, pecks out the eyes of newborn lambs, is a harbinger of bad luck—yes, I see that.” McAllister continued, “What you’re saying is, they saw something, something big and black that they couldn’t make out, and their friend disappears, so they make up the idea of a hoodie crow.”

  “But why can it no’ be for real? Bairns can see what we canny see, or what we have had bred out o’ us.”

  “Maybe.” He sighed. “The boy’s body being found in water, the same as Kenneth, brought it all back for me. …”

  “Find who did this, McAllister,” Jimmy ordered. “Find who killed the boy. And any help you need, just ask.” He stood. The audience with Jenny McPhee was over. As he walked McAllister to his car he made a promise.

  “The other matter, we’ll think on it. Any man, even a foreigner, at the mercy of thon eejit Inspector Tompson, has my sympathy. He has my double sympathy when he’s locked up in the town prison. Not a nice place that.” Jimmy shuddered at the memory.

  The next morning, McAllister sat in his office contemplating the previous night and the phone call from Sandy Marshall. His friend had used all the resources of the paper, not to mention a few favors and a bit of cajoling. Nowhere in the labyrinthine administration of the church was there any information on a Father John Morrison. His last posting before being sent to the Highlands was a church orphanage; that was all Sandy had been able to find out.

  A very irate Inspector Tompson had told McAllister not to call again. “Father Morrison is a respected member of the community. I know him personally, being one of his congregation, and a fine man he is too.”