It was queer the bobbies coming here, though likely they had to check all hotels and boarding houses. He had never heard Katie speaking about Huntly, but he didn’t know much about her, only that she was an orphan and had been brought up by her grandparents in Cullen. Could she be the girl they were looking for? If Sammy wasn’t her brother, it would explain a lot. Spitting out a fragment of tobacco which had worked loose, it dawned on him that, if Katie was the girl they were after, the cops would likely question him, because some of the staff had known they kept company for a while.
Having an inborn distrust of policemen, Dennis did not want to be drawn into giving evidence in court – he couldn’t risk Beth finding out he’d two-timed her – so he decided to deny any relationship with Katie. He wouldn’t have minded landing Sammy in the soup, but he suddenly remembered that one of his late father’s mottoes was never to spill the beans about anyone else to save your own skin, not even your worst enemy. It had a habit of backfiring on you. A third generation, highly proficient poacher, Jock McKay had always managed to talk himself out of trouble. As he often told his son, ‘It’s best to stick as near the truth as you can without giving anything away, for the bobbies can check up.’
With this in mind, Dennis thought he would be best to admit to being friendly with Katie and wait to see where to take it after that. What he did not know about the success of his father’s creed, however, was that although Jock made no secret of having walked along the river on a certain night, his denials of catching and selling salmon were backed up by the local hotelier and publican, whose wives had already cut the fish into steaks and distributed some to the doctor and the minister, who both knew where they came from but kept quiet. The policeman also knew Jock was guilty, but because he was not above accepting a cut of salmon himself, he made a show of trying to trace the thief and told the gamekeeper it must have been a gang from Glasgow or Edinburgh. What was a salmon or two to a man as rich as the laird?
A rap at his door made Dennis jump. ‘Yes?’
‘You’re wanted in the office.’
So it was Katie, he thought. Stubbing out his cigarette, he ran upstairs, ignoring the porter’s blatant curiosity. Freddie, like the manager, had only recently come to the Temperance and hadn’t known the backward Sammy.
‘Ah, Mr McKay,’ the police sergeant began, ‘we are looking for a Katie Mair, grand-daughter of William John and Mary Ann Mair of Seatown, Cullen. I’ve been told you were quite friendly with her when she worked here?’
Dennis answered cautiously. ‘We went out a few times.’
‘Do you know where she went when she left here?’
‘I’d stopped going with her before that.’
‘You don’t know where she works now?’
‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘Nor where she is living?’
‘No, I haven’t seen her since.’
‘One of the chambermaids said you’d been living out for a few months, it wasn’t with Katie Mair, then?’
‘No, I was lodging with a widow … to tell the truth, we had a thing going, you know, but she got a bit too serious, so I got out quick.’
The sergeant’s eyes twinkled understandingly. ‘I see. Now, do you think Katie Mair could be working in another hotel?’
It occurred to Dennis that it might be a good idea to put them on a false trail, at least until he could warn Katie. ‘No, I don’t. Before we split up, she told me she was fed up being a waitress, and, if I remember right, she said she was looking for a shop job with decent hours, but I don’t know if that’s what she did.’
‘What about the boy she had with her?’
‘Sammy? What about him.’
‘Did you know he wasn’t her brother?’
‘No, is that a fact?’ Having figured that out for himself, Dennis hoped his show of surprise was convincing. ‘Good God! I never dreamt … I didn’t have much to do with him.’
‘Katie didn’t say anything to you about him forcing her to run away with her?’
‘Never, and if that’s what all this is about, I’m sure you’re wrong. She was real fond of him.’ Too bloody fond of him, he thought, savagely.
The sergeant shot a troubled glance at his constable, who was standing by the door. ‘There’s something damned fishy about this, if you ask me. The message from Huntly said the boy had abducted the girl, but it looks like she went with him of her own free will. There’s more to it than we’ve been told, and we’ll have to start on shops now, not hotels. It’s a bigger job than we thought.’ He turned to Dennis again. ‘Thank you, Mr McKay, you’ve been very helpful.’
His legs shaking with relief, Dennis returned to his room and lit the half cigarette from the ashtray. He had got away with it, and he had explained away all the things they could have tripped him up on, but he’d better warn Katie tonight. Whatever the big lump had done that had the police after him – and it couldn’t have been abduction, they were wrong there – she’d be bloody grateful to him for telling her. Not that he wanted to go back to her – his innards still turned at the thought of her letting Sammy’s slobbery lips touch her. That alone would have put him off her for ever, never mind what else she had let Sammy do.
It had been a hard day, and Katie sat down thankfully on the couch to read the paper. The front page held nothing of any interest to her – it was mostly about the miners complaining about their wages again – so she turned to the Women’s Page and was reading, with some envy, about the Marcel Wave which was popular with those women who could afford it, when she grew conscious of Sammy fidgeting in his chair and hoped he would go to the lavatory before it was too late.
She was on to the next page when she thought she’d better make sure that there was nothing wrong with him and held the newspaper down. ‘Sammy!’ she shouted. ‘What on earth … ?’
He was sitting with his trousers wide open. ‘See how big my thing is?’ he smirked.
Gripped by the fear of being raped again, she did her best to hide how she felt. ‘I don’t want to see it, put it away.’
He fumbled for a moment, then said, ‘It won’t go. Jackie told me how to make it grow, and mine gets bigger than his.’
She silently cursed the absent Jackie. He knew too much for his own good. ‘Go through to your room.’
‘Jackie says if I do this,’ he demonstrated with his hand, ‘it’ll burst and get little again.’
‘Stop that!’ she cried. ‘It’s rude!’
His hand halted. ‘Rude? Like farting?’
‘Worse than that. Stop it!’
‘It’s too nice to stop.’
‘Do it in your bedroom, then. You shouldn’t let anybody see you.’ She held the paper in front of her eyes as he went past her, but after his door closed an appalling thought struck her. Had he told Jackie what he had done to her? Was that what had led to the comparing of sizes? Oh, God! What if the boy had told some of the other hotel workers? She would never be able to look any of them in the face again. And it would be just what Keith Robb was waiting for – an excuse to have her dismissed.
A tight knot had gathered in her throat and she was still considering the awful prospect when Sammy came back, looking in dismay at the wet patch on the front of his trousers. ‘It burst all over my breeks.’
She could hardly keep her voice steady. ‘Take them off and I’ll wash them. Now listen, Sammy! You must never do that again. Do you hear me? Never!’
‘Jackie says he does it a lot.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t do it in front of his mother. Take off your breeks and get to your bed. This minute!’
While she plunged his trousers up and down in hot soapy water, Katie’s stomach was churning. She couldn’t possibly cope with him if he was going to do things like this. He had satisfied himself tonight, but how long would it be before he turned to her again? She had better buy a lock for her bedroom door, or she would never sleep for worrying that he would come in and jump on her.
It might have comforted Katie to k
now that Sammy was lying in bed sure that his dream had come true. When Jackie had said, a few days ago, ‘I’m lucky having a mother to wash my clothes and cook all my food,’ Sammy had boasted, ‘Katie does that for me.’
‘She’s acting your mother, then,’ Jackie had told him.
He hadn’t been too sure what acting meant, but Katie had said tonight she was his mother. She hadn’t exactly said it, but she’d said Jackie didn’t do it in front of his mother, so that meant she was Sammy’s mother. The pain he always felt when she scolded him was replaced by the deep emotion of mother love, though he did not recognize it as such. He did know, however, that he couldn’t touch her again – a man never touched his mother – and he didn’t need to, for he could get the lovely thrills without touching anybody. But he’d better not let Katie see him at it again.
Dennis had waited until Sammy would be in bed, and without thinking, he gave his usual knock on Katie’s door. Her look of joy when she opened it made him say, hastily, ‘I’ve only come to tell you something I thought you should know.’
His serious expression alarmed her. ‘What is it, Dennis?’
‘The police were looking for you at the Temperance today.’
‘Oh no! Not after all this time?’ She slumped down on the couch, her face chalk white.
‘You knew they’d come after you?’
‘I’ve been expecting them ever since …’ She broke off, then clasping her hands together in an attempt to stop their shaking, she murmured, ‘I’d better tell you, Dennis.’
As she described Angus Gunn’s cruelty, Dennis jumped to the conclusion that she and Sammy had run away because they were afraid of the man, but he felt most uneasy when she told him about the night of the thunderstorm. Had that been the start of them being lovers? But … no! She’d definitely been a virgin the first night he’d gone to bed with her.
Katie hadn’t finished, and from the way she hesitated in mounting agitation, he gathered that there was worse to come. Her voice sank to a whisper when she spoke of Mr Gunn coming to her room, and sure of what she was going to say, Dennis was completely flabbergasted by what she actually told him. The Peterhead police had made a helluva bloomer! Sammy wasn’t wanted for abduction, he was wanted for murder!
‘So you see,’ Katie went on, babbling now because it was such a relief to speak about it, ‘I’d to make Sammy run away … if they’d caught him he’d have been hung … and they’d have seen I’d stabbed Mr Gunn, and I was scared they’d arrest me for attempted murder.’
Aware that it was hysteria and not amusement, Dennis fought back an urge to laugh and tried to reassure her. ‘You couldn’t have done much damage if he was able to get up and fight with Sammy.’
Her voice was steadier when she took up her story again, and it came as no surprise to Dennis to learn why they’d had to leave Struieburn. Anybody would have thought the
same as the farmer.
‘So how did you end up at the Temperance?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Sutherland was John Leith’s sister, and she gave us a letter for him, a kind of reference, she said.’
‘Nobody else knew that’s where you were going?’ When Katie confirmed this with a shake of her head, Dennis went on, ‘So it must have been her that told the cops where you’d gone.’
‘I don’t think she’d have told them,’ Katie wailed. ‘She was so nice …’
‘You can’t trust anybody,’ Dennis interrupted, wishing he had never involved himself in her troubles, but how could he extricate himself without making it obvious? Then an idea occurred to him. ‘I think your best plan would be to go to Cullen.’
‘I can’t go back to my Granda and Grandma …’
‘Yes, you can. Just tell them the same as you told me, and they’ll likely go with you to the police station, and once the cops know Sammy didn’t mean to kill his father, they’ll not charge him with anything, or you either.’
‘Do you really think so?’
He thought it highly improbable, but said, ‘Well, I’m not sure, but there’s always the chance.’
‘Oh, Dennis, thank you for coming to tell me. I thought you’d never want to see me again after what happened. If the police do let us go free, we’ll come back to Peterhead, and … would you come and live with us again?’
Positive that the police would not overlook their crimes, he felt safe to say, ‘Like a shot, and we could get spliced in a month or two, if you like?’
He returned to the Temperance in high spirits. He would never see Katie again, but at least Sammy would be where he belonged … swinging at the end of a rope.
Nemesis having overtaken Katie, she had no sleep that night, and she lay in bed wishing that she had Dennis’s confidence in the outcome of her trip to Cullen. The search for Sammy and her had gone on for three whole years, which meant the police were convinced of their guilt, and not even Granda’s silver tongue would save them. Should she risk making the journey? Or would it be best to run away again? She had some money laid by, so they could take a train or a bus and be hundreds of miles away before the bobbies found out where they’d been living.
But she was tired of this thing hanging over their heads. She couldn’t go through life being afraid of discovery every minute of every day … and what about Sammy? Uprooting him again could unsettle him, maybe unhinge him altogether, and she could be putting herself in terrible danger. God knows what he might do to her. It might be best to face up to what they had done, and pray that her story would be believed.
Early the following morning, she told Sammy that they were going somewhere on a train, and after combing his flyaway hair he stood meekly until she inspected his hands and the back of his neck, which he often didn’t bother to wash. At last she decided that he was quite presentable, for she was so used to his vacant expression and loose mouth that she no longer noticed them. ‘That’s us ready, then.’
He walked at her side proudly, as a son should walk with his mother, and sat down next to her in the carriage when the train came in ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Somewhere you’ve never been before,’ she told him, hoping that her grandmother would be more understanding than she used to be. She still wasn’t sure that she was doing the right thing, but she had no option, and Granda would do all he could for her.
Her heart outpaced the clickety-clack of the train as they neared Cullen, and by the time they alighted, she was so tense that she forgot to show their tickets and was called back. She prayed that no one she knew would see them, but luck was not on her side, for they had just left the station when the local constable cycled past. His bike wobbled when he turned to look at her, and she held her breath when he came to a halt. Surely he wouldn’t arrest them here?
‘Katie? Katie Mair?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, for what was the use of denying it? Johnny Martin had known her since she was a little girl.
The PC turned his bicycle round. ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the police station. Him, and all,’ he added, when Katie gave Sammy a little push as if urging him to run for it.
Her feet dragged as they went along the street, and her heart was in her mouth when they were shown into a small room, bare except for a table and two chairs. When she was asked by Sergeant Thom if Sammy had threatened her if she did not run away with him, she answered truthfully that he had not, that it was she who had made him leave Fenty. Then he asked where they had been hiding, and she explained in some detail.
At last, pushing aside his notebook, Thom laid down his pen. ‘There’s some sort of misunderstanding here, Katie. We were told the boy had abducted you, but you say you went of your own accord, and what you’ve told me has corroborated what we’d already learned.’
Believing that he was about to come to the real reason for the search for them, she burst out, ‘We ran away because I didn’t want Sammy to be hung for the murder.’
Johnny Martin’s mouth fell open. ‘Murder? What murder?’
‘His
father. Isn’t that why you’ve arrested us?’
Glowering at his constable for forgetting his place, the sergeant said, ‘It was Mr Gunn that laid the charge against his son.’
This unexpected information took a little time to sink in, then Katie’s blood started to pound inside her head and she could feel her body shrivelling with shock. But it couldn’t be true! She must have misunderstood. Gripping the edge of the table, she forced her swimming brain into some semblance of rationality and managed to gasp, ‘Are you saying … he’s not dead?’
Thom smiled reassuringly. ‘Anything but. He made a damned nuisance of himself to my colleagues at Huntly for a long time for not being able to find you.’
Katie was in such a state now that she lost track of what he was saying. To think she had worried all this time about Sammy being charged with murder, when all the time Mr Gunn was alive and pestering the police to find them. What would he do to them now they had been found? This was too awful to contemplate and she concentrated on the sergeant again.
‘… and when they told him they’d discovered you’d worked at Struieburn for a while, he went there himself and got it out of the farmer’s wife that she’d sent you to the hotel in Peterhead.’
Doing her best not to give way to the hysteria threatening to overtake her, Katie could visualize Mr Gunn forcing the woman to tell him, and couldn’t blame Mrs Sutherland. Then another scene floated into her reeling mind. There had been two bodies on the floor when she and Sammy left Fenty. One had apparently not been a corpse, but what about the other? Why hadn’t the sergeant said anything about that? ‘Um … Mrs Gunn?’ she mumbled.
‘Aye, I forgot you wouldn’t know about her.’ Thom gave his head a sorrowful shake. ‘According to the Huntly sergeant, the poor woman died in her bed. Her doctor said he’d been expecting it, and there was nothing suspicious about it.’
The Three Kings Page 17