by A. D. Scott
“Not for my mother it isn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” His Dr. Jekyll persona returned. “You’re right, your poor mother. I’m really sorry for her.” His hands were up in an apologetic benediction.
He’s good at this, McAllister thought, he’s convincing, and he believes himself.
“John, your brother’s death was unfortunate. It’s always unfortunate when someone dies by his own hand. And so young. But there it is.”
“Jimmy McPhee, you remember him?”
“McPhee? I remember him well. I was always glad that our paths didn’t cross in the Highlands—quite a temper has Jimmy McPhee.” He leaned toward McAllister. “But he is a liar and a rascal. Him and all his family.”
“The photographs.” McAllister persisted. “Can’t you see that they could be construed as disturbing? Can’t you imagine how some boys might feel abused to be photographed naked?”
A momentary flicker crossed Morrison’s confident features.
“Healthy minds, healthy bodies—you’re no doubt a man who knows his classics, it has been part of many cultures from the Greeks onward.”
He sat back, smug and satisfied, his hands again clasped over his belly, as though he had delivered a final unarguable case for his perversion. But McAllister caught a tiny flicker of an eye toward the suitcases on the luggage rack before Morrison settled back in the seat.
“I’ve always taken photographs. I could have been a professional, so I’m told. As a matter of fact your old paper has published a few over the years. Some of the photographs in my private collection may not be understood by the ignorant. But they are beautiful portraits with nothing untoward about them. Nothing wrong at all.”
“Fine, then, we’ll be stopping shortly so you won’t mind checking with the police to see if it’s all right for you to be off to the city without a word to anyone—just in case you’re wanted to help with inquiries, as they say. You won’t mind that, will you, Mr. Morrison, or is it Bain?”
McAllister was near the end of his strength when the thought flashed before him.
“Hang on. You said the death of the boy Jamie was an accident. But the police think it was the Polish man, only they have no proof. So if you had nothing to do with it, you must know something, you must be protecting—”
The blow was sudden and fierce. McAllister was completely unprepared. The big man brought his clasped hands, a double fist, swiftly upward. McAllister instinctively jerked backward, but not quickly enough. The left side of his jaw caught the full force. The right side of his face hit the window and he slid down, leaving a streak of blood and snot, before crumpling onto the carpet. Distantly, he heard the compartment door open and close.
“The communication cord.” He couldn’t move, couldn’t reach up. But he dragged himself along the floor and half-upright, clutching onto the seat, the compartment door handle, he lurched into the corridor. Morrison was by the carriage door. He had opened the window. He was leaning out with his hand on the handle waiting for the train to slow. Like a wounded beast, McAllister found the adrenaline he needed and threw himself at the priest, gripping him around the legs. The big man had endured many a tackle in rugby. He shook McAllister off easily and with an added kick to the ribs sent McAllister tumbling backward into the man’s suitcase. The door opened; the train slowed to walking pace. The priest was poised to take flight. Then a tremendous lurch, as the engines pulled hard, sent a shock wave through the couplings. The carriages concertinaed into each other. John Morrison Bain went flying. In a flash, into the whirl of wind and snow, arms windmilling, he tried to grab anything but found nothing. He tumbled into the deep soft drifts, careering down the embankment. The hoodie crow had taken flight. It would be in a series of black-and-white images that McAllister would always remember the last sight of his nemesis.
His face hurt, his ribs hurt, he was lying in a puddle of melted snow and his senses were rapidly shutting down. A stop was coming up soon. They’d find a doctor, or at least a dram. They’d find the man. Had to. Then he saw it. Or rather, felt it. On the undamaged side of his rib cage, the metal corner poked into him. The suitcase. The photos. They must be there inside. Were there any of Kenneth? Or Jimmy? Or of wee Jamie? This was the evidence. It took all his willpower to stay conscious. But he had to know.
Get a grip, McAllister, he thought, moaning. He shifted over and leaned against the wall. The carriage door had slammed shut but the snow blew in through the open window, creating a miniature snowdrift on and around him. The suitcase catches flicked open—not locked. He scrabbled through the contents, tossing clothes, boots, robes to the floor—no photos.
The pain was coming at him in waves. A purple light filled his head when he shut his eyes—the doorway to oblivion, that he knew. Inside pockets; empty. Zipped pocket on the lid—spare socks. Another lurch of the train sent a shockwave of pain from head to toe. The suitcase was lying on its side, empty. Along the bottom, the metal strips were held together by black electrical tape. He clawed a corner, pulled at an end. Then another. And another. He ripped a fingernail and the flesh on his thumb. His hands were so cold he didn’t notice. He reached inside. He eased out the cardboard envelope and shook it open. Photographs spilled around him, slithering and sliding onto his lap, the floor and into the melting snow. One look was enough. He scrabbled frantically for the pictures, stuffed some back into the envelope, others into the greatcoat pocket, his hands barely able to obey his brain. Lying there, eyes shut, amid the strewn wreckage of suitcase and clothing and papers and rolled-up socks, he struggled to keep himself in this world but failed. As he descended, the thought of all this shame being exposed in police stations, in the procurator’s office, before a jury in a court of law, sickened him; the thought of unknown eyes poring over images of defeated boys decided him. And, decision made, he hid all the photos as best he could, then he let go.
The train drew alongside a platform lined with storm lanterns, sending out wavering pools of light into the fast-falling snow. There was much more than the usual activity outside. Railway officials and policemen, muffled against the storm, moved like marauding bears through the carriages. The carriage door opened.
“Mr. McAllister sir, what have we here now?”
Constable Willie Grant came to the rescue like the proverbial St. Bernard. And like the dog, he too had a flask of alcohol. He spoke to the comatose figure as he would to a lost boy, not bothered that there was no reply.
“You’ll be a’ right, sir. The doctor’ll be along soon.” Willie Grant had his arm around McAllister, easing him up to a sitting position, tenderly brushing the snow from his hair. He put the flask to McAllister’s lips and though most of it trickled down the side of his mouth, the fumes were enough to bring him back to semiconsciousness. McAllister’s first thought was, What kind of nasty cheap blend is this stuff?
“Best go easy on the whisky, sir.” The policeman put the flask away. “Mr. McAllister, have you seen yon priest fellow? I’ve had word that I have tae hold on tae him.”
McAllister tried to speak, tried to nod his head, but everything hurt.
“Mmm-mm, gone.” It came out as a groan but Willie Grant got the message.
“You just hold on, sir. I’ll be back in a tick.”
But he had passed out.
An ambulance arrived. McAllister was taken to hospital, patched up and put to bed. Just as the shot of morphine was taking effect, Willie appeared again.
“I’m right sorry about this, Mr. McAllister sir, but I need to get the search party going and there’s a fair bit of snow the night. Can you tell us anything?”
Big galoot that Willie Grant sometimes seemed, this initial impression hid a kindness and a courtesy. He handed McAllister a pencil and his spiral notebook. Drugged and speechless, the journalist’s instinct kicked in. He scribbled down the gist of what had happened, finishing with “Find the bastard!”
Willie stopped at the nurse’s station as he left. “Can you figure this out?” He handed her hi
s notebook. “I canny make head or tail o’ it.”
The sister squinted at the spidery scrawl.
“After the doctors’ handwriting I’ve had to put up with, this is easy.”
In the dark, they tramped along both sides of the tracks where the priest was thought to have flown the carriage. The snow was now horizontal, driven by a fierce whistling wind. An arctic hour and a half later, PC Grant called off the search, concerned for the safety of his helpers.
“Daylight the morrow, lads. Meet at the car park of the Carr-bridge Hotel.”
Willie Grant went back to the police station to discover one more problem; the phones were down. So he did the only thing possible. He went to bed.
It was only a few weeks to the solstice. Dawn came about eight o’clock. Willie Grant had been up for some time preparing a huge breakfast, his recipe for a successful day’s work. And today was looking to be very hard work. Not the least of it would be shoveling snow. Then there was the matter of no phones. Added to that was the sole responsibility of finding this man. But Willie still made time for breakfast.
Snow chains on, he backed the old Land Rover out onto the main road. Crews spreading salt followed the snowplow and with a vehicle like his, PC Grant had no problem getting to the hotel. The early sun laid a pink glow over the snow, the mountains, the lochs and the tarns. Along the horizon, the pink quickly turned deeper and deeper to a pure blood red, shot through with shimmering, shifting pink, orange and violet. The high sky was deep cerulean blue, the air still and calm and crisp and cold. And dangerous.
“Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,” Willie muttered.
Other Land Rovers, some locals on foot and two men with ponies met up in the hotel car park. One volunteer, a shepherd, had brought his dogs. The black-and-white collies were more used to digging for lost sheep but had shown a talent for finding other lost creatures. Maps were consulted, opinions solicited, options agreed on, then off set the raggedy band, each with a section of track to scour with a rail crew on a push-and-pull track-maintenance bogie at the ready to relay information up and down the tracks. Willie Grant and his team, including the dogs, were to cover the downward run toward the pass of Drumochter. They searched for signs of disturbance in the snow, but the storm had continued most of the night, masking everything. A scant hour later the men began to look upward as often as downward. The sky was closing in.
“Keep at it, lads. As long as possible.” Willie passed a flask of tea among the crew as they continued their search. He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the snow. Coming down the tracks toward them was the bogie.
“Constable Grant,” came the shout. “We’ve found him.”
The vehicle came to a halt on a long screech of brakes. The men crowded around, eager for news.
“The receptionist at a guesthouse in Kingussie says a big man, soaking wet and covered in snow, came looking for a taxi. Said it was important he got to Glasgow and the train was no moving. No one local would risk the journey, but another guest, in a hurry to be away before the storm set in for good, he offered the fellow a lift. They went off thegither on the main road south.”
“When was that road closed?” Willie was anxious.
“Not till a whiley later. The weather was nor’easterly.”
“Was the road further south snowed up?”
“No knowing, Willie.” One of the men thought about it. “Sometimes it’s all this side o’ the hills. Sometimes it’s worse o’er yonder.”
“So he could have got through, you’re saying.”
“Aye, mebby.”
A few big soft flakes began a gentle dance. It was time to give up. The rail crew offered everyone a lift back to the station on the bogie. Most of the searchers clambered aboard. The shepherd, deciding to walk back along the tracks, whistled for his dogs. One came immediately. One didn’t. The big collie bitch started to sniff at the snow farther along the search area, toward the main road. Then she sniffed in tight circles, running around a clump of gorse. She started to dig with happy snuffling grunts, slowly at first, then faster, certain, her companion circling her, making small encouraging yelps.
“Leave her be,” said her master to the watching team. “Stand back and let her do her work.”
They were well trained, these collies, barking only in an emergency. A small piece of black cloth was uncovered. The dog sat back, satisfied. Now it was her master’s turn. Willie and the shepherd crouched down and continued to widen and deepen the hole with their bare hands. He pulled. A bundle of cloth came out of the snowdrift. A neatly rolled cassock.
“He’d have taken that off—all the better to move in the snow. Keep digging, lads, make sure there’s nothing else. I’ll put markers around the area so’s we can find it later.”
“Well, no much later,” the shepherd told him. “Fifteen minutes or thereabouts and it’ll be another day before we can come back. If that.”
“Oh aye?” Willie asked.
The older man stared at the constable with steel gray eyes.
“Aye,” apologized Willie. “You’re the local.”
No more was discovered. The men left, glad that their efforts had yielded something, if not the man himself. Willie set back out to check the progress of the snowplows and to catch any more news from the surrounding villages. There was still no telephone, no messages. He didn’t hold out much hope for finding this priest fellow.
“Long gone,” he was convinced. “Back to his protectors.”
TWENTY
Ouch! That hurt!”
Chiara fidgeted, impatient to get down from the dining table, where she was standing so Aunty Lita could adjust the hem of the heavy satin wedding gown.
“Well, keep still. You’re jumping around like a circus flea.”
“But, Aunty, I have to meet Peter. I’m already late.”
“Cara, he loves you—he’ll wait.”
“Whose crazy idea was it to get married in December anyway?”
“It means a lot to Peter, to marry you on his mother’s birthday. So romantic.”
A week to go; Peter had absolutely refused to cancel or postpone the wedding. Karl is in prison, there is nothing we can do but wait, he told her when she had raised the question. Peter was shaken, even humiliated, by the reaction of some in the town. He had assumed that after all this time he was one of them, a citizen of the Highlands. But no more; he now knew there would always be those who would look closely at him when a scapegoat was needed. The Corellis had also suffered—they were outsiders, accepted, but still outsiders and always were, always would be. The attitude of Inspector Tompson shocked him; his logic was that Karl, as a stranger and a foreigner, must be guilty. The policeman’s attitude that he, Peter Kowalski, fifteen years in the town, was guilty by association was, to the inspector, a logical conclusion. Karl’s imprisonment, his own brief incarceration, had changed Peter. That his place, their place, in this Highland society that he had held so dear was tenuous and that blame for the unexplained, for plagues, famine and pestilence, could be used as an excuse to take away all that he had worked for—that shocked him.
Chiara had shared their fears with Joanne, who had cheerfully informed her that although she was Scottish, she too was an outsider, and that’s the way it always will be. “Even when I’m dead and buried,” she said, and Joanne had laughed.
Gino walked in. “An angel.” He beamed at his daughter. “And so like your mother.” He couldn’t hide the tears. “But it’s no problem, Chiara mia. If you want, we have the wedding in summer. You wait another seven months, no? You tell me, I do it. For you, anything.”
“Papa, you know I didn’t mean it.” Chiara was still agitated. “I’m worried, that’s all. Peter is still upset, and will our friends make it through the snow? The Edinburgh lot are fine, they’ll come along the coast. But everyone from Glasgow has to come over the mountains. I hope they don’t get stuck.”
“All the families are meeting in Edinburgh, and there’s no snow o
n the East Coast,” Gino assured her.
“There’s no point in waiting another seven months, I don’t think they have summer in Scotland.” Aunt Lita was half-joking. “Maybe in a week the snow will be gone. But it would be lovely to have a white Christmas.”
They met that evening in the small restaurant and cocktail bar, perhaps the only sophisticated venue in town. It was a last chance for a quiet evening alone, to talk, before being swept up in the wedding drama where, increasingly, Peter felt like an actor in an especially effervescent Italian opera.
In the corner, at a candlelit table, they sat quietly, ate sparingly and looked at each other often. The waiter came and went, as unnoticed as the food. Chiara was immensely glad that Peter seemed to have recovered his good cheer.
Dinner over, he inquired, “Would you like a digestive?”
“No thank you.” Chiara was dreamy, slightly inebriated from the wine.
“I have a request.” He reached into his pocket, took out a red box and laid it on the table between them. “Would you wear this when we marry? It was my mother’s.”
Chiara stared at the necklace shimmering in the candlelight, then stared at Peter.
“How on earth did you get this?”
“You know some of the story of Karl. The rest I will tell you, but this, this precious gift, he brought from my mother, and now it is for you. I want you to wear it on our wedding day.”
Chiara was mesmerized by the gift and the knowledge that this man, who had brought joy and love and hope to her, her family, their friends, was to marry her. Next week.
“Peter. This is so beautiful. Thank you.” In English, it seemed a pitiful, small phrase, “thank you,” but she could find no other, and he spoke no Italian. She held it up. He watched the motes of light dance across her skin, her hair. “I will always think of your mother when I wear it.”
“I also have this, it arrived yesterday.” He handed over a large envelope, an official look about it. It was addressed to himself. “This comes from the Catholic agency in Edinburgh. They help people in Europe find each other, keep in touch. But they must go carefully. The situation is difficult. Look, inside.”