by A. D. Scott
More silence.
McAllister sighed. “I’ll have to pass these on to the police.”
“Aye,” Don agreed.
“Hector, do you have the photos of Mae Bell’s room, the ones you took after the acid was thrown?” Joanne was asking because the strangeness of the plimsolls still bothered her.
“Here.” Hector reached into his schoolbag. “I’ve only a couple; the rest are in ma studio.”
For once Rob did not correct him on “ma studio” but pulled the pictures towards him, looking for what Joanne was seeing and not succeeding.
“That coat. And that apron, it’s hideous.” She hadn’t seen this particular shot before, and it more than ever confirmed her confusion. Joanne hated the pattern of cabbage roses and hollyhocks, even in black and white. “Mae Bell would never wear clothes like that.”
“We don’t know they’re hers.” Rob was still finding it hard to contemplate Mae Bell involved in a crime.
“There’s no link between the letters and the acid attack,” Don reminded them all. “I was found with a bloody knife and I didn’t kill anyone.”
The others well remembered how Don had been locked up in a prison cell, with the threat of a life sentence hanging over him, for a murder he did not commit.
The next hour was taken up with “what if” and “maybe” and “perhaps” until McAllister told them he would have to phone DI Dunne.
Although Joanne joined in the speculation intermittently, she was hurt. I can’t believe Mae has left without saying good-bye. I thought we were friends. What’s so important she couldn’t tell me she was leaving?
“Aye, and when you see the inspector, prepare for a right bollocking for no’ taking these notes to the polis sooner . . .” Don finished.
• • •
Sundays were a day of deadly boredom for the young men and women of the town—unless they were courting. Rob called round to Frankie’s house in the late morning, knowing that without Nurse Urquhart to make them, none of the family would be at church. Rob didn’t want to, but he knew he should be the one to tell Frankie the news.
“Do you fancy going out?” Rob didn’t go in, staying on the doorstep of the Urquharts’ semi-detached house.
“Where?”
“Drumnadrochit?”
“As good as anywhere.”
Church services finished, there would soon be the usual convoy of Sunday drivers out for the afternoon, driving at twenty-five miles an hour as they peered at the loch, hoping to catch sight of the monster. With Frankie on the back, Rob threw the Triumph into the bends, passing cars, perilously close to oncoming traffic at times, enjoying every moment of the road.
The Clansman Motel was a new construction of stone and glass and tartan carpets, and, being a motel, the bar was open. The view from the first floor was spectacular. “We can keep a lookout for the monster,” Rob joked as he returned with beers for Frankie and himself. The joke didn’t work. He noticed Frankie was looking more suave than usual, not so much his former Teddy boy self. A new haircut, that’s it. And jeans.
“How did you get hold of a real pair of jeans?” Rob was postponing the conversation, although he really did covet the denim jeans, knowing they were impossible to find in the Highlands.
“Mae bought them for me.”
Rob was about to say, I bet she never bought those in Elgin, before he remembered yesterday’s meeting in the Gazette office.
“Mae said she’s leaving soon.” Frankie was staring into his pint.
“Ah. Mae.” Rob hesitated how to put it, then went for honesty. “I heard she’s already gone.”
“Never.” Frankie’s glass spilled onto the coaster—tartan, naturally. “Mae would never go without saying cheerio.”
Rob shrugged. “She was staying at McAllister’s house . . .”
“Because she was scared.”
“She left a note for him and another note for Joanne . . .”
“Was there one for me?”
“Frankie, she’s gone.” He too was upset Mae Bell had not said good-bye to anyone. “All her things are gone, even her lipstick . . .” Rob didn’t know this. He meant to lighten the dark surrounding Frankie. He doesn’t need any more misery, Rob was thinking, he’s obsessed with her, it’s completely unrealistic, it hurts. He was remembering how he’d felt when he split with his last girlfriend, Eilidh. She turned out to be a nasty piece of work, yet he was still hurt.
Remembering the envelopes and notes lying on the reporters’ table yesterday morning, he started again. “Frankie.” But he couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say, Mae Bell may have written the letters. He couldn’t think, far less say, Mae Bell may have attacked your mother.
Rob could see from the way Frankie, eyes glazed, was staring out the window, that speculating on Mae Bell’s possible involvement would devastate Frankie. He took a sip of flat beer. I wish the Loch Ness Monster would appear. Even that, Rob decided, would not take Frankie’s mind off Mae Bell. And I haven’t the heart, or the courage, to tell him there’s worse to come.
Although Rob did not know this absolutely, he was certain there was much worse to come.
After dropping Frankie off at his house, Rob went home. His parents were out. He was glad. He didn’t feel like talking.
He was in his bedroom, the wireless on low, a big band playing not Rob’s favorite music but he couldn’t think clearly without some noise in the background. A notepad and pencil beside him, he was lying on the bed, remembering yesterday’s gathering, trying to come up with some ideas, ideas that would make sense of the information and give him a killer of a story.
• • •
Sunday afternoon was the ritual walk through the Islands for Joanne and family. Granddad Ross was with them but not Granny Ross. She had terrible pains in her stomach and was pretending it was the flu, but knowing it was the worry about her only son leaving to go to Australia. She was also terrified that Joanne would be estranged from them; she knew her daughter-in-law was more than friendly with her boss, Mr. McAllister. Bill had made sure she knew.
What if Joanne marries and they leave for the south with the bairns? She put more Epsom salts in a glass, stirred, swallowed, waited. Half an hour later there was no relief.
“How’s Mr. McAllister?” Granddad Ross asked as he and Joanne walked together, the girls running ahead, desperate for their Sunday ice cream. From Granddad Ross this was a genuine inquiry. He was ashamed his son was a wife beater.
“He’s fine,” Joanne replied. She waited to hear if there was more to the question.
“He’s a right fine man, so I hear.” He said no more as they had arrived at the café in the middle of the Islands.
The girls thanked their granddad for the sixpences and ran off to queue. Joanne and her father-in-law sat on a bench in a warm patch of sun shining through a gap in the canopy of beech trees. The sounds of water and the constantly shifting green light made Joanne feel they were underwater.
“I hope you and Bill splitting up won’t make us strangers.” He couldn’t use the word divorce.
What he said, so plain, so simple, so heartfelt, made Joanne reach out, pat his arm, noticing the dark spots on the wrinkled hands resting on the walking stick, hands that had wielded a bayonet in an earlier war that he, unlike his son later, had survived mostly intact. The hands were trembling.
“Dad, I think of you as the father I always wanted.” She was shocked to feel the tears start to fall. “I . . . I mean I haven’t seen him, my father in ten, no, eleven years. He was a hard man . . . not like you, he . . . I don’t miss him. But . . .”
“He was your father.”
She took the neatly folded, worn but newly bleached white hankie from him, and shook it open. She wiped her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m crying . . .” She saw that the girls had reached the head of the queue and told herself to behave, they’ve seen enough tears in the past.
Her father. Her husband. Mae Bell. Who else is going to let me down?
; “Your mother and me, we’re right glad you’ll be staying. Thon wee girls mean the world to us. And you.”
“Not so wee anymore, Dad. Annie will be doing her eleven plus and then off to the academy.” They agreed it was certain Annie would make the academy.
“Mum, Granddad, Mr. McAllister was taking a walk too.” Jean had a strawberry ice cream in one hand and McAllister in the other.
“What a coincidence.” Granddad Ross said standing, holding out his hand. There was no cynicism in the remark and the greeting was glad.
“Aye, a real coincidence.” Although peeved at his assumption that she would be here and he could join them, Joanne had the grace to smile.
As they walked back homewards along the riverbank, her with the girls, McAllister asking Granddad about the start of the bowling season, the state of the greens, who was on the lawn bowling committee this season, Joanne was watching McAllister, seeing him as others saw him—a man of substance. With his substantial house, his standing in the community as editor of the newspaper, his acceptance of her girls, her family, she knew he truly cared for her, and knew she loved him in a quiet way. So why do I hesitate?
They reached the Infirmary footbridge. Granddad Ross turned back to Joanne. “You young things go off and enjoy yourselves. The girls are coming home with me.”
Joanne had to put her hand over her mouth at “young things.”
“Granny’s made a treacle tart and she’ll be waiting.” He lifted his hat. “Mr. McAllister, it’s been good meeting wi’ you.” Without waiting he walked onto the bridge, the girls following like faithful puppies.
Annie turned to wave. “See you later, Mum.” Her grin was for McAllister. “McAllister, don’t forget you owe me a book.”
Joanne was about to say, Mr. McAllister, then shook her head. She was wondering if she might end up marrying McAllister to please her daughters and her in-laws and everyone on the Gazette.
“Joanne, sorry to break up the family afternoon. I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t important.”
She stood. The wind blew her hair in her face, catching in the corner of her eye, stinging.
“Mae Bell?”
“Aye.” He pointed back to the triangle of park next to the war memorial. “My car is up there.”
She couldn’t wait. “Tell me now.”
“The police are looking for Mae Bell. Nothing more at this stage. But she has disappeared.”
“And you think . . .”
“Joanne, I don’t know what to think. I went into her room and found her makeup bag. Her suitcase is under the bed. And no one has seen or heard from her since Friday morning, when she bought a ticket to Elgin.”
“Really? Elgin?”
“Inspector Dunne said the ticket inspector swears she wasn’t on the train.”
“So where is she?” Joanne was looking at him, the anxiety clear in her eyes.
“I wish I knew.”
NINETEEN
It’s quiet for a Monday, Joanne was thinking as she sat at the reporters’ table, making notes for her page. When the sound of a commotion rang up the stairs, she smiled. I knew it was too good to last.
“Don’t you treat my fiancée like that,” Hector was shouting, “it’s no’ her fault your stupid copy has gone missing.”
“It’s the silly wee girl’s job to find it. So where is it?” This sentence Joanne heard as she was running down the stairs.
“Would you all keep your voices down? They can hear you as far as the high street.”
Mal Forbes turned. He pointed his finger at Joanne instead of Fiona. Aiming squarely at the sternum, the extended digit finger and the wild eyes made him look as though he was about to cast a curse.
“This is all your fault, you and your nosy parker friends.” From his voice, from the poking gesture, finger trembling, Joanne wouldn’t have been surprised if lightning came out of the fingertip to emphasize his anger.
“Mr. Forbes, I don’t know what you’ve lost, but can I help you find it?” Her tone was gentle, soothing, as though trying to calm a terrified child.
He looked into her eyes to see if she was being sarcastic. Saw the offer was genuine. All the anger drained out of the man. Looking at his shoes, he shook his head, saying, “No, I’ll ask the client if he has the original.” He went towards the door, and with his back turned to Joanne said, “Thanks all the same.”
She would have sworn he had tears in his eyes, but no one would believe her, least of all Rob, who came in saying, “What’s up with cheerful face?” tossing his head in the direction of Mal Forbes, who could be seen disappearing down Castle Wynd, hands in his pockets, hat pulled down.
Mal’s smaller than I remember, Joanne thought.
Rob said, “Let’s go upstairs, I need to talk to you.”
Hector stayed with Fiona.
“Fiancée?” Fiona asked. “Since when?”
She was trying to be casual about it, but she was thrilled. Marrying Hector Bain was all she wanted—that and a job for life on the Gazette. She appreciated Hec’s standing up for her but had Mal Forbes’s measure. All the same, she was thinking, it shows Hector really cares.
“I want to marry you—if you’ll have me.”
“Of course I’ll marry you, Hector, but we might have to elope to Gretna Green—my father, he’d kill me, or you, if he found out we’re engaged.”
“I think ma granny’s car would make it that far,” he said but wasn’t at all certain the old jalopy would manage the climb up the Pass of Drumochter.
When Hector left to take pictures of a woman’s one hundredth birthday party, Fiona was too thrilled by the unofficial engagement to wonder too much about Mal Forbes.
A few days previously—she’d come in a quarter of an hour early to tidy up the accounts—she’d seen Mal Forbes in their office, but from behind. She saw his shoulders shaking, him sniffing. He didn’t turn around, but blew his nose on his hankie, and she backed out of the room to leave him alone. When he came out, he walked quickly past her and as he was going out the door he’d said, Sorry, I’ve a terrible cold, and she had accepted his explanation. Almost. No, I must be mistaken, she was thinking, he couldn’t have been crying. Men don’t cry.
Rob and Joanne’s conversation was less cheerful.
“Frankie Urquhart called me. He’s taken a day off work. Told them he has the flu. He doesn’t. He’s heartsick.”
Joanne thought it all through: the leg in the shinty boot; the acid attack; his mother’s death; an infatuation with Mae Bell; Mae Bell leaving. For a small-town young man whose height of excitement was dancing in the Caledonian Ballroom to the Harry Shore Big Band, this had been a momentous two months.
“Frankie says he’s off to Paris as soon as possible, but he can’t leave his dad and wee sister yet. I never mentioned Mae might have had an accident—or something.”
“Mae Bell is off on one of her mysterious jaunts. She wants to find out all she can about her late husband. Grief takes us all differently.” That she was wrestling over her own lack of grief at her father’s death she didn’t share. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.” Joanne almost believed this.
DI Dunne had said the same. “She’s a grown woman,” the detective had told McAllister after examining Mae’s room. “I know she left her things here, but women always have more than one lipstick.”
“I want to help Frankie, but I don’t know how.” Rob was finding it hard to explain to Joanne that he was lost when it came to dealing with his friend’s grief. He felt clumsy. His usual mode of confronting unpleasant situations—jokes, quips, avoiding the topic—weren’t working. The raw grief on Frankie’s face, in his voice, the way Frankie couldn’t line up a snooker shot without fluffing it or gouging the green of the cloth, told him how deep Frankie’s pain was.
“Rob, the best way to help Frankie is to find his mother’s killer.” Joanne’s own frustrations were more than enough for her; her divorce, the death of her father, McAllister’s need for her; although she f
elt for Frankie, she had little space left to worry about someone else.
Rob knew this and knew he was losing sight of finding Nurse Urquhart’s killer. Mae Bell, he thought, she so enchanted us we’ve forgotten Nurse Urquhart.
“Nurse Urquhart, I’ve run out of ideas,” he said.
“Nurse Urquhart.” Don came into the room. “The woman deserves justice.” The deputy editor sat down, pulled out a copy of the racing guide to mark off the horses that had won or lost. He was transferring the information into his wee black book, his personal form guide. Finished, he looked at Rob. “Nurse Urquhart? You were saying?”
“I’m out of ideas,” Rob replied.
“Me too,” Joanne added, but quietly; she was out of ideas on many fronts.
“Get hold of thon editor of ours; it’s time to convene a kitchen cabinet.”
• • •
They met that evening in McAllister’s kitchen. Joanne brought the girls over on the bus, leaving their bicycles at home. They were delighted. From the front seat of the top deck, Annie announced loudly that she wanted to live in McAllister’s house so she didn’t have to keep books in two places. Mercifully, Joanne thought, there were only three young lads on their way to the bus station, off to hang out with their friends from other housing estates, kick litter and beer cans, and generally look fiercesome. Joanne knew it was all bravado and knew they were not interested in a housewife in a Fair Isle beret with an overloud schoolgirl daughter.
“Are you going to solve Nurse Urquhart’s murder?” Annie asked when she saw the four musketeers from the Gazette sitting around the kitchen table. She knew nothing of Mae Bell’s disappearance.
“Annie!” Joanne scolded. Then, shaking her head, smiled with her lips closed.
“We’re going to do our best,” McAllister told her.
“Good enough.” That Highland phrase, covering everything from grudging approval to outright praise, sufficed. They would do their best; in Annie’s opinion, that meant they would succeed.
She returned to the sitting room, to her sister, her homework, to the essay on “What I Want to Be.” I am going to be an editor of a newspaper in Edinburgh, she wrote, or I will write books.