North Sea Requiem

by A. D. Scott

  “It’s not that people don’t care,” Margaret said. “It’s because they’re scared of death.” At their age, and having missed the war, the young men had little experience of death.

  Frankie left shortly after. Margaret insisted Rob give him a lift in his father’s car. When Rob returned, his mother was still up.

  “Do you believe it could be this lad from the Gazette?” she asked.

  “Not really.” Rob was having a hard time accepting that anyone would throw acid, especially over a shinty competition.

  “The acid hit Nurse Urquhart in the throat, but it was probably meant for her face. If this fellow is as small as you say, it makes sense.” They knew the nurse had been a tall woman, perhaps five foot eight.

  “I know, Mum, but it’s all so . . .”

  “Horrible, nasty, vicious . . .”

  “Deadly.” Rob said what he had not wanted to say. “It killed her.”

  • • •

  It took three days—and one day after the Gazette came out with the information about sulfuric acid, but nothing about a bottle being missing from the print room—before another anonymous letter was delivered to the Gazette. This time the letter came in the post. A similar letter was posted to the police.

  The accusation was enigmatic but grammatical, the vocabulary and spelling correct.

  ASK THAT SELF-RIGHTEOUS MAN ON THE GAZETTE ABOUT HIS WIFE AND THE NURSE.

  Joanne was in the reporters’ room when she opened the letter. It was in among the other letters addressed to the Gazette—letters usually to the editor complaining about anything from the council to the obituaries to the state of the Commonwealth, and usually innocuous, occasionally funny or libelous.

  This letter was on cheap white unlined paper, in a brown envelope, posted, not hand delivered. The message she read once to herself. She shuddered. She loathed anonymous messages of any kind.

  She read it a second time—out loud to the others.

  “All we need to work out is who is ‘self-righteous,’ ” Rob said.

  “There’s more than one self-righteous man on the Gazette,” Don pointed out.

  Mal Forbes was Joanne’s candidate. Then she felt her cheeks warm. Me too, I can be a wee bit self-righteous—though goodness knows I’ve no reason to be. Joanne’s prejudice was women who wore too much makeup or who started sentences with “I’m no gossip but . . .” She would also admit to being self-righteous about people who never read and never took an interest in anything outside small-town life.

  “It’s nothing like the other letters,” Joanne pointed out. “Different notepaper, posted—not hand delivered.”

  “Who is married and self-righteous?” Rob asked.

  “Mal Forbes,” Joanne muttered. Only Rob heard and nudged her with his elbow, whispering, “Meow.”

  “The father of the chapel lives across the street from where the attack on Nurse Urquhart took place,” Don told them, not sharing his thought that the man was the most self-righteous person he’d ever worked with. “His fingerprint is also on the bottle . . .”

  “Never.” McAllister thought the man too much of a worthy Dickensian character to be a suspect.

  “Two suspects and both from the Gazette,” Rob said. “Unbelievable.”

  “No, laddie, for many only too believable.” Don knew how many loved to hate their local paper. He knew how many believed they could do the job much better than the professionals, because so many over the years had told him so.

  “Someone threw the acid. Why couldn’t that someone be one of us?” Joanne’s observation was correct. And depressing—much like the low-level cloud that came up that morning, enveloping the east coast; hanging over the firths, moors, and mountains; enveloping the town in shades of pewter for the next three days.

  With both printers released without charge, the matter did not go away. Theories as to the culprit abounded, theories involving strangers, neighbors, family, and friends. Even a visiting missionary seconded to the Dalneigh Church was suspected, but only because he was a foreigner from Nigeria and different. All the speculation was accompanied by an awareness of horror: the knowledge of how damaging, indeed fatal, acid could be; images of the scarred and the maimed and the dying haunting many—mostly women; the smell of burnt flesh haunting others—mostly survivors from two world wars. This was a death that touched all.

  TEN

  Frankie Urquhart didn’t realize his anger was actually grief.

  “Thon apprentice. Him on the Gazette. Alan Fordyce. What’s the police saying?” He was not yelling at Rob, but the way he spoke with a full stop every few words made his bitterness clear.

  Rob had the phone under his chin, trying both to give Frankie his attention and to ignore Don, who was pointing to the clock with his forefinger.

  “I don’t know, Frankie. The police talked to him, they talked to all of us on the Gazette, but there’s no evidence, only his print on a piece of glass, and part of his job is to clean the metal print . . .”

  “Five minutes.” Don was loud enough for Frankie to hear.

  “I’ll have to go, we’re on deadline. Talk later.”

  Frankie hung up.

  Rob didn’t call back, knowing he was winging it—to make the edition he needed to write a story about the formation of a local Ban the Bomb branch in seven minutes.

  “Frankie Urquhart,” was all he said to Don.

  “Aye. Poor man.” Don was referring to the father. As a recent widower himself, he felt for the man.

  One of the main jobs of the chief and only sub editor on a small newspaper job was to stay until the first of the newspapers rolled off the presses. Don loved the evenings when he put the newspaper to bed. Forty-odd years—even he would have to stop and count exactly how many years he had been at the Gazette—and still there was that moment of excitement when he was handed the first newspaper off the rollers. He would open it carefully, feel the warmth, smell the ink, see his layout, his headings, and feel the pride.

  He knew that Rob grabbed the newspaper, glanced at the front page, searched for his own articles, then moved on to the sports pages. When he finished, he was off and planning the next edition. He knew Joanne would read the paper from cover to cover, including the classifieds, the births deaths and marriages, and all the wee community events and council planning notices. He suspected she even read the God Spot.

  McAllister . . . you can’t count on what McAllister will do, Don was thinking as he left the building.

  The evening was unseasonably mild for the end of March. Still and quiet too, no wind, no rain, no gales, no sleet. Unusual, Don was thinking, when he heard a groan echoing down the tunnel of the close that ran between the Gazette building and the neighboring office.

  He looked in. It was too dark to see anything. A fainter lowing like a cow in distress made him reach for his matches. He struck one. He could see a shape farther down. He went in. Lit another match. He saw the blood.

  “Alan? Is that you? Alan?” He could see the young man was far from right.

  “Hang on, I’ll be back wi’ help.” He hurried back inside—running was beyond a forty-cigarettes-a-day man—but he went as fast as he could to the loading bay. The noise was deafening; bundles of newspapers coming off the conveyer belt, being tied and covered and tossed onto the loading bay, ready for the delivery vans to take them to the trains. He gestured to the father of the chapel to come outside. The man was in his coat and cap, about to leave. Don took his arm and hurried him into the street so they could hear each other talk.

  “It’s young Alan Fordyce. He’s in the close. He’s injured. I’m phoning an ambulance.”

  The father of the chapel grabbed the senior compositor as he came out of the building buttoning up his jacket for the short walk down Church Street to the Market Bar.

  Don left them to care for the lad and made the call from the Gazette switchboard in reception. Wednesday night was a slow night, so the ambulance was there in seven minutes. The yell from Alan as they
carried him out told the men bones were probably broken.

  “Who did it? Did he say?” Don asked as the men lit their cigarettes, waiting for the police to arrive.

  “No, not a word.” This came from the head compositor. But not until after he looked at the boss, the father of the chapel.

  Don didn’t believe him. But he knew he would hear no more tonight.

  Sergeant Patience arrived with a young constable who seemed more a schoolboy playing dress-up in his dad’s uniform.

  “Do you want to give me statements here or at the station?” the sergeant asked.

  “Inside.” Don jerked his head towards the Gazette building. “I don’t know about you”—he was speaking to the men but knew the sergeant would have a quick one with them—“but I could use a drink.”

  The sergeant glanced at the boy policeman, told him to guard the close, then followed the men up to the reporters’ room. But despite all his questioning, all he found out for certain was that Don McLeod kept a good whisky. The printers and the deputy editor said they knew nothing about the attack. He suspected they knew more. He was certain they would not tell him. He put away his notebook, telling them he would talk to them more in the morning, and bade them good night.

  Don did the same, saying, “We’ll sort this out in the morning.”

  The morning brought no more news other than that Alan had three broken ribs, broken bones in his foot, and a great deal of bruising. Rob was the reporter on the case. When, having charmed the nurses into letting him see Alan out of visiting hours, all he got was Dunno. No. Didney see their faces. No. No idea.

  A very sorry Alan had a purple-green bruise and a scrape from the flagstones in the close on one side of his face, and his leg was in plaster, hoisted up on a pulley. The exposed part of his foot, toes mostly, were in Technicolor purple, yellow, red, black—Rob had to look away.

  The doctor told him more when Rob explained he was Alan’s colleague and friend—although friend was stretching it a bit far, as they were only on nodding terms.

  “He said he plays shinty,” the doctor began. “I haven’t told him, but I fear his playing days are over. The bones in the foot . . . it seems like the stomping, mostly on one foot, the right one, was deliberate.”

  “His foot was the target?” Rob was beginning to feel queasy about the foot connection and couldn’t remember if the other foot, the foot in the boot, was the right or the left.

  “It looks like it.”

  On the drive back to the office, Rob began to piece together the sequence.

  First, Don McLeod had reported the bottle of sulfuric acid missing from the print room. The printers and Gazette staff questioned. The printers and compositors fingerprinted. Fingerprint matches for Alan Fordyce and the father of the chapel. What was his name? He was always known as only the “father of the chapel” or occasionally as Auld Bugger-lugs—Don’s name for him when the union official was being particularly obstreperous. A Welsh name—William? Williams? Evans? That was it, Mr. Evans. Then what? The questioning of the printers was not reported in the Gazette. So who knew? Silly question, Rob, he told himself, this is a small town.

  “Who knew the police questioned the printers?” Rob asked as he came into the reporters’ room to a silent McAllister, Don, Joanne, and Hector.

  “Frankie’s dad called.” It was Hector who spoke. “DI Dunne came round for Frankie before breakfast. He’s no’ home yet.”

  “Alan Fordyce is saying nothing, so how could Frankie . . .?” Rob stopped. He remembered.

  “How do the police think it was Frankie who gave the lad a hiding?” Don asked.

  “I never said . . .” But Rob couldn’t look at him.

  “I heard you on the phone telling Frankie about the fingerprints.” Don had him there.

  “Alan had most of the bones in his right foot broken, looks like he’ll never play again. Frankie would never do that.” Rob was trying to convince himself.

  The others could hear it. They said nothing.

  The phone went. Joanne answered. It was a call about the fire brigade chasing a pig that escaped from the slaughterhouse and was last seen running towards the Black Isle ferry, making a break for home. She made a note. Hung up.

  Still no one spoke. No one typed. No one threw paper darts. Phoned the bookie. Went for coffee. None of the usual Friday-day-after-publication-not-doing-very-much-day stuff.

  The phone went again. Joanne answered, “Yes. Hmm. Uh-huh.” Wrote down a number.

  “Are you covering tomorrow’s match?” McAllister asked Rob, trying to keep the question casual. Failing. There was little need to ask which match.

  “I am,” Hector replied. “It’s us versus Lochaber. But without Coach Urquhart, we haven’t a chance.”

  “And without Nurse Urquhart,” Joanne added, then wished she hadn’t.

  “I’ll be there,” Don said.

  “Me too,” Rob added.

  McAllister looked up at the clock. “Right. The Criterion Bar. My shout.”

  • • •

  Mr. Evans, the father of the chapel, rarely came into the reporters’ room. When, later that afternoon, he did, everyone stopped working.

  “I have some information.”

  “Let’s get McAllister in here too,” Don told him.

  Rob yelled, “McAllister!” It worked.

  McAllister stood. Joanne waited, saying nothing. Mr. Evans addressed Don, as the deputy editor was the one he always dealt with.

  “A group o’ young lads, four or five o’ them, were seen coming away down the Wynd last night.”

  Joanne thought Mr. Evans sounded like a policeman in the witness box.

  “One o’ the delivery drivers saw them as he was turning in to the loading dock. He had no idea where they were coming from. He wouldn’t recognize them again. The dock was lit bright, an’ the opposite side where they were passed by is in shadow. He thought nothing of it. Until he heard. Then he came in to tell us.”

  Don was quiet, waiting for the rest of what he decided was a rehearsed speech.

  “This manny is no’ from around here, Tain man he is. He wouldn’t know lads from the town.” The father of the chapel was almost reciting his speech.

  “Have you told the police?” McAllister asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Use the phone in my office.”

  The father of the chapel nodded and left. Don and McAllister looked at each other. And waited. When the footsteps receded down the stairs, they lit up. McAllister was the first to put the question.

  “Do we believe him?”

  Don scratched his chin and said nothing. Joanne stretched her shoulders. Rob was flicking a pencil back and forth between his fingers.

  “Do we believe what the father of the chapel just said?” Hector asked.

  No one replied. So Hec squeezed his eyes tight shut. “It’s late,” he started. “Most places are shut. There’s what, four vans? Three? They’re parked in the lane and the loading bay. So there’s the drivers, and the man that loads the papers onto the vans, maybe some others from the print room having a fag. Four or five lads come past. No one sees anything?” He opened his eyes. “Naw, I can’t picture it.”

  “How did the delivery driver know what happened to Alan Fordyce?” Joanne asked.

  “When did he come in to talk to Mr. Evans?” Rob asked.

  “Why would anyone do such a thing to Alan?” Hector asked.

  “There’s trouble on the way,” Don finished.

  “Aye,” McAllister agreed.

  That one word, the Scottish positive—or negative—that could be used to fill silence, to release tension, to punctuate, summed it up. Aye. Agree. It’s how it is. Bad. And could get worse.

  • • •

  Saturday had rain bursts, sunbursts, cloud-scudding, wind-cutting-to-the-bone weather. Bught Park, where the shinty was played, was a wide-open space on the north side of the river next to the Royal Northern Infirmary.

  Rob and Hec were walking
there. Don walked too, taking the Greig Street Bridge then following the river westward to the playing fields. Although Lochaber was not his team, it was of the Gaeltacht. He knew some of the players’ grandfathers—although he told Rob it was their fathers he remembered.

  Just as well it’s close, Don thought as he passed the sign indicting the emergency entrance to the hospital. He knew this could turn into a grudge match. He’d heard the rumor that some in other shinty clubs were taking sides.

  When he arrived he saw clusters of spectators stood around the sidelines, gathered in groups of team loyalty. Lochaber Camanachd Club colors were red and white stripes.

  And they’re as good as I remember, Don thought after the first forty-five minutes, particularly thon wee fellow on the right wing.

  It was a low-scoring match, 1–0, but fast and furious nonetheless, with many shots on goal. The clash of sticks, then some very skillful passing, started the game, but hacking led to three penalties. There were far too many offsides, the players were watching their markers rather than the whole game. From the yells of the players, all twenty-four of them, the shouts from the referee and the coaches, and the cheers and groans of the supporters, Don appreciated how much more seriously than usual they were all taking this game.

  “Nurse Urquhart would have been proud,” Don told Rob when the match was over. “It was hard to hold Lochaber to only one goal up.”

  “We still lost.” Rob had his hands in his pockets, kicking at the grass, looking the epitome of glum. Hec was over the other side of the field taking snaps of the winning team.

  No one expected the fight to come from where it did.

  “You’re liars, the lot of you!” the voice shrieked—the sound of someone in pain. Someone female. “And you’re ma father’s team. Why aren’t you . . .” The rest of the shrieks were blown upriver by the fiercesome wind that had come up in the last half of the match.

  Rob could see Hec running towards the kerfuffle. And it was not to take pictures. He put his arm around a girl and walked her rapidly towards them. It was Morag, Frankie’s sister. She was sobbing as though her heart would burst.

  “They’re, saying, it was, our Frankie . . .” She was coughing and spluttering between the words, “He never, he wouldney, he . . .”