by A. D. Scott
“Me neither.”
Upstairs, Don was thinking the same thing; he didn’t voice the thought in front of the others, but he was mentally preparing a front page appealing for information on Joanne’s disappearance. He daren’t contemplate worse.
Rob came in. “Here, some copy for page five, and the article on the town dogs worrying the sheep at the Leachkin farms.” He didn’t take off his jacket. He was dangling an old aviator’s leather hat with sheepskin-lined earmuffs in one hand and the bike keys in the other. “Elgin,” he said. “Joanne was convinced Mae’s search for information about her husband was the cause of all”—he gestured to thin air—“all this. So, Elgin, or the air force base at Kinloss, is where it started. I’m thinking of driving there.”
McAllister said, “I don’t see how that will help find her.”
“I’ll be back tonight, and it’s better than doing nothing.”
They all understood, and McAllister envied Rob his freedom to escape, to drive fast, to burn up the frustrations on his red motorbike.
“Aye. But drive carefully. We need you.” He coughed, looked away, knowing Joanne’s disappearance meant almost as much to Rob—and Don—as to him.
He told Rob, “When we were in Elgin searching for information on Mae and Robert Bell, Joanne said the woman in the tea shop, who turned out to be Mal Forbes’s cousin . . .” He got up, tried to shut the door, but as it had been open for a century, it wouldn’t move. He went into his office. Rob followed. Then Don, who shut the editor’s door.
“Joanne thought the woman in the tea shop was hiding something about the Forbes family. I also got the feeling the editor of the newspaper knew something but didn’t want to gossip.”
“First time I’ve heard of a journalist who doesn’t gossip,” Don said.
“I could go and see him,” Rob offered.
“No, you’re too young. I’ll give him a call—one old journalist to another. But you talk to the women, that you can do right well, so . . .” Don looked at the clock, looked at Rob.
“I’m off,” Rob said. “The tearoom in the town square, you said?”
McAllister only nodded. He was lighting a new cigarette from the previous one, his mouth felt foul and his bones were hurting and his eyes were gritty and his brain had all but seized up.
“Don’t drive too fast, it’s no’ worth it.” Don patted his reporter on the back “We don’t need to . . .” lose another reporter he was about to say, and caught himself just in time.
When they were alone, McAllister, needing to fill in the silence, started, “I used to think that when you love someone and you were parted, you’d know if they were alive or dead,” speaking to himself more than to Don. “But I don’t believe that anymore. I have no idea where she is, or why she’s missing. I’m terrified.”
Don knew that terror better than anyone at the Gazette. “She’s not dead yet. Until you know, you should always hope.” Don’s voice, his words, were firm. And he didn’t believe a word of it. “Back to work, McAllister.”
This was the day for McAllister to compose the editorial. Don decided to pass the task on to Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle, chairman of the Gazette board and sometime correspondent on matters rural, who could be relied on to conjure up the right tone, the right topic for such times. When it arrived, the editorial was on spring in the glens, and the moors and the farms and foreshores, an innocuous piece on the rhythm of life. More a poem, it was beautiful and right and full of hope; no one wanted to anticipate the worst.
• • •
Rob arrived at Nairn so fast he scared himself. He overtook the Aberdeen train rattling along on the track that ran parallel to the road. He passed a convoy of army lorries. A steam-road roller, as massive as a leviathan, he overtook on a sharp corner.
He drove the next twenty-five miles less fast, the countryside no longer a green blur; the horns of cars, lorries, and buses, from drivers he had scared the wits out of, no longer a long, fading moan of fear accompanying him out of every bend, every blind corner.
He drove into Elgin Town Square. He looked around at the stone façades of offices and shop fronts with rooflines of crow-stepped gables, the fountain, the menacing church filling one side of the square with heavy columns reaching skyward to impress the faithful and intimidate the unbeliever. Amid the architecture of old and ancient and no discernible modern, he spotted the tearoom; half curtains of lace, the obligatory strip of faded tartan on the window ledge, an assortment of decorative plates on stands interspersed with china ladies and figurines of cute wee bairns of the maudlin variety, posed with lambs, or dogs.
A bell clanged as he opened the door. He introduced himself to the woman he assumed was Effie Forbes and ordered tea.
She covered her surprise well. She asked after Mrs. Ross. When he explained she was missing, she said, “That’s terrible. Honest to God, what’s the world coming to?” But he knew she knew. He could tell by the way she moved her hands, the way she said “honest.”
He sat listening to Effie warble on. He was drinking tea and demolishing three scones with lashings of butter and homemade raspberry jam; he was certain she was prevaricating, and was waiting for her to give herself away.
After half an hour, just he was despairing of finding out anything at all, the bell above the door clanged. Five women came in. By the hats and coats and sturdy walking shoes, Rob knew they were town worthies. Some sort of committee, Rob thought.
Effie Forbes rushed forwards to seat and serve them, then stood chatting as though she were having an audience with some relatives back from visiting the queen at Balmoral.
The young woman who came from the kitchen with a fresh batch of scones, piled high on a plate covered by a glass dome, was a younger, more attractive version of Effie.
She asked Rob, “Are you wanting a fresh pot o’ tea?”
“No thanks, I’m full.” He grinned at her. “Did you make the scones? They’re terrific.”
She smiled back and leaned just that little bit too close, clearing the crockery and knife and empty teapot. “Meet me outside the Assembly Rooms at six,” she murmured.
“We’re needing fresh scones at this table,” her sister called across the tearoom. She’d glimpsed the hurried exchange and was not at all pleased.
“Don’t you be talking to strangers now,” Effie said to Aggie, the younger sister, who was putting on her coat.
“There’s no one else interesting to talk to in this place,” her sister said, but was out the door quick smart before Effie could comment.
Rob had an hour and a half to kill before the meeting, and as he wasn’t into visiting ancient monuments—of which the town had plenty—he went to the library to read the local newspaper. The Gazette looks good compared to this, he thought. At five to five, he was asked to leave by a woman who so resembled Effie Forbes that he thought Elgin must be populated with women from the same clan—or close cousins thereof.
He was leaning against his bike, keeping an eye on the high street, when Aggie Forbes came up from behind and said, “Hello stranger.” She giggled. “I came up the back way,” she explained, looking around in case Effie was lurking behind some column or monument or statue. “Can we go somewhere out of town?”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you.” Aggie knew Rob was looking for information, and if it meant she would see more of this exciting, good-looking stranger with a dangerous motorbike, she would help all she could. She swung a stocking leg over the pillion seat. An old boy on the pavement watching them caught the white flash of thigh above her stocking tops, sending him halfway to a heart attack.
Rob and Aggie ended up at a café on the main road north, frequented by long-distance lorry drivers and Teddy boys.
Rob ordered bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding, and tattie scones, plus a workman’s mug of tar-black tea—breakfast at half past five in the evening.
“Did you hear about the woman who works with me on the Highland Gazette who’s gone missing?” he
asked Aggie when he’d finished.
“Mrs. Ross? Aye, I heard about it on the wireless. Effie said she was the woman who came into the tearoom a couple of weeks ago.” Effie hadn’t mentioned to Aggie her visit to Moira Forbes, or running into Joanne again. “Is Mrs. Ross your friend?”
“Aye. We work together and she’s my friend.” He told Aggie about Annie and Jean and babysitting them. He told her about McAllister and Don and Hector, and Mal Forbes now working with them, and how everyone was terrified that something had happened to Joanne. “She’d never leave her girls,” he finished.
That decided Aggie.
“Mal Forbes is our cousin. He met Moira when he was working as a clerk at the air force base—you know, RAF Kinloss. Moira was working in the same office when they were first walking out. Granny Forbes told him she was flighty, but he never listened, he was right crazy about her.” She shook her head. “It turns out she was the one that was crazy.”
“Really?” Rob had on his best I-want-to-hold-your-hand smile.
She explained to Rob about Maureen, Moira and Mal’s first child. “Before she was married she was good fun—so ma sisters say. After the birth of their Maureen, Moira went a wee bit funny and Mal looked after her, really good to her he was. Then she got better. Then she insisted on going back to work. Mal hated that, but ma granny took care of the wee one. When she was expecting again, and when she had the boy, she was sick for at least a year after. And they say the boy’s no’ quite right.” The child Aggie had never seen, but she didn’t tell Rob that. She looked at him, saying, “There’s no loonies on our side o’ the family.” She had been terrified it might be catching.
“That’s all really sad.” Get on with it, Rob was thinking, but knew not to hurry her.
“When Mal told my mother they were moving north, he said it was because there’s better doctors there.”
The asylum maybe, Rob thought, but for his wife or his son or both? He asked, “Do you think Moira Forbes is still ill? Ill enough to do something silly?” He was thinking, Kill someone? No, he told himself, Joanne’s alive, she has to be.
“Oh, aye.” Aggie was delighted to dissect her cousin’s wife, divulge family secrets to a stranger. Talking about Moira Forbes was almost a sport among the Forbes sisters. “Moira takes some queer turns and there’s no knowing what she’ll do. One time she went to Aberdeen and bought a shopful of clothes—not for herself, mind, for Mal and wee Maureen. But none of them fitted so he had to take them back and . . .”
“How does Mal cope?”
“As I said, he’s crazy about her. He can’t see how much worse she is since she had the boy. If you had a child who’s not quite right, plus a bampot for a wife, it’s no wonder he needed to live where no one knows them.” She said this kindly; the idea of keeping family troubles away from prying eyes seemed reasonable, especially in a small town like theirs where gossipmongering was as much a sport as the football.
“Would Moira Forbes harm someone?” Rob persisted. He needed some facts if he was to persuade the inspector to search the Forbes house for Joanne.
“Naw. Never. She’s only a wee thing. All she does is cry a lot, then laugh a lot. She’s great fun most o’ the time, really good to go out wi’ to the dancing and the like.” Aggie didn’t know this for certain, had only overheard her two elder sisters talking. “Mind you, she’s strong—hauling sacks o’ tatties on the farm when she was young,” she said.
“What about Mal, would he hurt anyone . . . to defend his wife?”
“Oh, aye, he’d have a right go at anyone who said anything nasty about his wife. As I was saying, he’s absolutely besotted wi’ her.” She couldn’t think why. Then again, she couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t want to leave their small town like she did.
“It’s late, I have to get home,” Rob said. “Thanks for your help, Aggie, but I’m no further on finding Joanne.”
“Aye, but you found me.” That was when Aggie Forbes started kissing him as though her escape from the small town depended on it. And before long, they were on a bench by the river kissing and cuddling. At first Rob was kissing her because she had helped him and he needed to charm her as a potential witness. Although she had been the one to start the kissing, he was never one to say no to a bonnie lass.
It took half an hour and many promises to meet again before he could escape Elgin. The drive back was cold and hard. He stopped twice to relieve himself. I’ve drunk gallons of tea, but found out very little. He stopped again when he was ten miles from town to clap his hands, as he had forgotten his gloves and his fingers were dead.
Arriving back in the late evening, he decided it was too late to call on McAllister. And there’s not much to tell.
He now knew Moira Forbes was ill. Nutty as a fruitcake, as Aggie Forbes put it. But is Moira Forbes capable of . . .? Here he stopped. He had been thinking, killing Joanne. But had to forcibly change to—harming Joanne. Kidnapping her. Hiding her. Anything but killing her. That Moira Forbes had attacked Nurse Urquhart Rob considered a strong possibility. That she would attack Joanne was what he was terrified of. But still there’s no real information that will force the procurator fiscal to sign a warrant to search the Forbes home.
He slept five hours. He came into the office early, hardly showing the lack of sleep. Today was deadline day. He was needed. He reported his findings to McAllister and Don. Then he telephoned DI Dunne. Then got on with the ordinary task of the newspaper.
Two hours later, DI Dunne called McAllister. “I spoke to Mal Forbes. Their son was committed to an institution in Aberdeen before they came to the Highlands. That was the main reason they came here—for a new start. The boy has been diagnosed as mildly”—and here DI Dunne had to consult his notes—“autistic.” He hesitated before saying more, then relented, knowing how distressed McAllister was. “I was also told that although Moira Forbes is sometimes unwell, she is stable. She is on some new drugs and is not a danger.”
He didn’t tell him that Moira Forbes had received a course of electric shock therapy. This was confidential information even he was not entitled to, but he had persuaded the doctor in Elgin to divulge, saying it was a matter of life and death. Which the inspector believed it was.
When DI Dunne repeated that there was no news of Joanne, McAllister dropped the receiver into the cradle. Lifting his head to the high window, where rain was streaming down like water from a hosepipe, he let out a roar of pain. Everyone who heard it felt the hurt, the wound, the despair.
TWENTY-TWO
Mae thought it must be late afternoon or early evening. She knew Moira Forbes would be bringing supper soon, and this time, she was determined she would escape. Have to, she was telling herself, I have to. Joanne is getting worse by the hour.
“McAllister?”
“It’s Mae Bell. Here, honey, drink some water.” Mae felt for Joanne’s lips, held the plastic cup to her mouth. Joanne spluttered. Then asked, “Where am I?”
The words were slurred, the voice so low, Mae only heard because for once the boy had stopped his background humming. Since Mae Bell had been locked up with him, first in the big room and then, when Joanne was captured, in this cellar, his repertoire had expanded from one traditional Scottish lullaby, two nursery rhymes, and what Mae recognized as “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?” Though how the boy would know that song she had no idea.
“Moira Forbes has us locked up in an outhouse. The woman’s as mad as a hatter.” She tipped the plastic cup up to Joanne’s lips. “Drink a little more.”
“I thought you’d left.” It came out as though a full stop was after every word.
“Without saying good-bye? My dear friend, I’d never do that.” Mae was putting into her voice all her experience singing love songs from the heart; she was giving Joanne the warmth and love they needed to stay strong. The despair she kept for the long hours when Joanne lapsed back into unconsciousness.
“I can’t see,” Joanne murmured.
“It’s nighttime.” Mae knew it was day because Moira was due to deliver the clean bucket and the water and the sandwiches for their evening meal—never anything at lunchtime. Mae lied because she couldn’t tell Joanne they were locked up in a narrow, semi-underground sarcophagus in the darkest dark.
When the noise of padlock and chain and scraping furniture awoke Mae Bell from her more and more frequent spells where nothing penetrated, not even the boy’s humming, this time she was prepared to attack the woman; Joanne’s head wound was dangerous, perhaps fatal if they were not rescued soon. And her friend’s condition gave Mae an added incentive to attack—if only she didn’t feel so lethargic, if only her legs would move when she told them to, her arms lift without effort, her fingers not fumble with simple knots. Most of all she wanted her eyes to clear, the red clouds, the clear film swimming over the eyeballs, to disappear.
The door opened. Moira Forbes was illuminated in the fingers of light coming from the gaps in the sheeting over the window in the main part of the shelter. One hand was holding the small bottle out to one side. With the other she was putting a small brown cardboard box inside the door.
Moira, her voice kind, almost apologetic, speaking as though it was a completely normal conversation, was saying, “There’s sandwiches in the box but stay in the corner please till I’ve gone or I’ll have to throw the acid in your face.” It was as though she was warning a child not to go too near the fire.
Mae knew Moira would throw the acid without hesitation. She could still see the wild, staring eyes, the saliva leaking from a corner of her mouth as the woman had held up the bottle, when Mae was first captured, saying, “You’ll get the acid in the eyes, not in the throat like the nurse. That shut thon busybody up, didn’t it?”
Mae would never forget how Moira held out the blue glass bottle, saying, “It will make a fine mess of your face. Burn your hair off, too.”
That day—Mae thought it was ten days or perhaps two weeks ago—Moira Forbes had come home from her doctor’s appointment early, the queue being long, the wait an hour, so the receptionist had told her.