The Low Road

by A. D. Scott

  “I know,” Mr. Dochery replied. “But when will that be?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  McAllister delivered the box of papers to the editor. After sifting through the first twenty or so documents, Sandy whistled and said, “This is sensational. Looks like the Gordon & Sons accounts are in here. Wait till Mary reads them.” He was laughing. “She’s still furious about the press conference. We couldn’t run her article after Gordon preempted us.”

  In a folder, separate from the files, Sandy found lists of names and dates and amounts of monies paid for “Services Rendered.” There were five pages, handwritten, and the payments, large and small, seemed to be regular. What was astounding were some of the names. The one that immediately jumped out was DI Willkie.

  McAllister smoked in silence as Sandy read the documents. He was not uninterested in the contents of the box, he was just exhausted. And he knew he’d find out soon enough.

  It took only fifteen minutes for Sandy to realize the documents were dangerous, illegal, and electrifying. He called his secretary and asked her to set up an appointment with the newspaper’s legal department first thing in the morning.

  When Mary walked in, she said, “McAllister, I heard you were here. What did you find out?”

  “And hello to you too, Mary.” Sandy was joking, used to Mary appearing whenever there was a story in the wind. “McAllister has just gone and delivered the coup of the decade—looks like the accounts of Gordon & Sons, but the real ones, not the ones tidied up for the tax man.

  “Read these,” he said. “We’re off to the canteen to recover. And Mary, lock the door and don’t open it for anyone except me.”

  “Fantastic,” she said when her colleagues returned. “More than fantastic! Where did these come from?” The sums of money, the sheer depth and length of the trickery—going back at least ten years—this was a scandal on a scale she had never before encountered.

  McAllister didn’t answer the question. “Jimmy McPhee is alive. He’s—”

  “I know. He’s back at my place,” Mary said.

  “You and Jimmy seem to be great pals.”

  Mary gave no indication she’d picked up on his sarcasm. “He needed a bed for a few days.”

  “Happy to hear McPhee made it,” Sandy intervened. “How is he?”

  “Broken bones, but alive. That man has nine lives.” She was leafing through the documents. She couldn’t stop herself.

  “What about these? Looks like a list of kickbacks—they’re dynamite.” Sandy handed her the pages.

  Mary said, “I know, they’ll blow the council and the police to kingdom come.”

  “I hope you get Councilor Gordon this time.” McAllister’s voice was flat, empty, and he had a headache, not something that normally happened without alcohol.

  “We’ll have to inform the police,” Sandy warned.

  Mary replied, “Aye, but not yet.”

  “I’m meeting the legal department tomorrow to see what we can publish, and I’ll ask them to lodge the documents high enough up the chain so no one can say they weren’t received.”

  “Publish first. Then give them to our Member of Parliament. Or is he compromised too?”

  “Don’t know, but it’s worth a try.”

  “McAllister, how long can you stay?” Mary asked. “There’s heaps of work here, we should get started—”

  “I can’t.”

  McAllister saw Sandy watching him. He knew he should explain but couldn’t. He couldn’t tell his friend, perhaps his only real friend, that a woman he hardly knew, and her daughter, had made the decision for him. The extinguishing of the light in Sheena’s eyes at the loss of a man they both knew was a criminal, whose life was always in danger of being foreshortened, had affected him deeply. “I need to go home.”

  Sandy heard the word home. That’s a first, he thought. He didn’t like what he saw in his friend’s eyes, didn’t like the black shadows under them. He knew nothing of Gerry Dochery’s family and he never would, but whatever made McAllister realize that the Highlands were his home, he was glad of it. “Thanks for delivering these.” He gestured at the papers. “I’ll see you at the wedding, if not before.”

  “Yeah, see you, McAllister,” Mary said. “Say hello to Joanne. And Don McLeod.” And she went back to the accounts, engrossed in the columns of figures and the final sums at the bottom of each column that, although she was no accountant, even she could see were staggering.

  As McAllister walked down the steps of the Herald building, hoping it was for the last time in a long time, he was glad Sandy Marshall hadn’t told him he was doing the right thing, hadn’t spouted a list of clichés about married life and happily ever after.

  He told his mother about Gerry, about seeing old Mr. Dochery. She listened quietly, and with tears in her eyes, but none shed, she shook her head, saying, “It was bound to happen sometime.” He knew she was not being unfeeling, but the inevitability of death was as obvious to outsiders as it was, McAllister suspected, to Gerry himself. The news of a granddaughter pleased her.

  “Just what Mr. Dochery needs, someone to care for.”

  She did not mention, and never would, her own feelings about grandchildren—something she’d given up hope of long since. As for McAllister, he had always rejected the idea of having children of his own. And always will, he had stated, often, when the subject was raised by the well-meaning—interfering busybodies, in his parlance. He had never raised this subject with Joanne, presuming that, in the same way she knew he took coffee black, no sugar, she knew that children, for him, were not a necessity.

  After again trying to persuade her to come north with him, unsuccessfully, he bid his mother cheerio, and she said, “I’ll be up north a day or two before the wedding.”

  Taking the A9 road north, as he knew the Ballahulish ferry would be closed until the morning, he drove through the night. Cigarettes and coffee from the thermos flask his mother had packed for him, along with some ham sandwiches liberally plastered with mustard that he consumed in a lay-by at the Pass of Killiecrankie, kept him awake most of the journey. But in that hour before dawn, on the high plateau, on the homeward stretch some ten miles short of Aviemore, he stopped again in a lay-by for the last of the coffee. In this summertime predawn, a tall post with red-painted markings, a snow marker, struck him as unnecessarily high. Then he remembered winters up here; the Gazette had published enough road closure notices for him to guess that this was the stretch of road where unwary travelers lost their lives.

  He relieved himself into a running burn. A faint smudge of silver was creeping over the hilltops. The sound of a bird, a solitary cry in an emptiness that formerly he would have cherished, hung in the air, a falling note, a cry that made him think that a spirit, someone he knew, was calling out for help. And he could do nothing. He wanted to cry. And he couldn’t. A sob escaped. He shook himself. He took off his jacket. He wrapped his arms around himself in the cold. Cold he welcomed. He had left the car door open. After starting the engine, he wound down the window. He wanted, needed the cold, the discomfort, anything to rid himself of a fear, a terror that that bird had implanted in his soul.

  “Big bairn.” He spoke out loud. “There’s no such thing as ghosties.” This he said in an exact echo of his father, a man he no longer remembered well, only seeing him in fragments, in small scenes, no longer as a whole complete man.

  • • •

  In the days after his homecoming, there was a quiet busyness in the house.

  “Chiara is organizing a small party at her house after the wedding,” Joanne told him.

  “That sounds good,” was all he said. But he was pleased. Chiara was Joanne’s best friend. Peter, her husband, was McAllister’s chess partner. They were good people. They wouldn’t make a fuss. And Chiara and her father, Gino Corelli, and more important, the aunt who lived with them, were wonderful cooks.

  “I asked Mary Ballantyne if she could come, but she says she can’t get away from work.”


  “The story she’s working on is potentially huge,” he told her, hoping she would not see how relieved he felt.

  “Do you miss it?” Joanne had her sewing basket at her side, and was sewing buttons on what looked like a new blouse, which it was, as she had started sewing again.

  He didn’t know the answer to that. Not completely. “I did . . .” He put down the magazine he’d been reading and considered his answer. “I did. Then, when I thought Jimmy was dead, and then Gerry was killed, and when I saw how much you have to sacrifice to chase a story . . .” Here he was thinking of Mary, a woman with no life other than her work. “I knew it was a young person’s game.”

  “There are other jobs in a newspaper. Editor, for instance.”

  “I don’t think I could live in the city again.” That part he was not certain of.

  “I’m not from here either,” she began. “I’m only here through marriage. I was, am, will always be an outsider. I am a divorced woman. I have been living in sin. My girls will have to live with that stigma too. One day they will hear the gossip—you know how cruel people can be.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  “I’ve never really considered it before now, but . . .” What she meant was, Where else can I go? This was the only place she had family and friends. She had been looking out the window as she thought this. Then she turned her gaze back on him, seeing a man diminished by the last weeks, months even. She loved him. She wanted this marriage. But in quiet moments, when she felt his uncertainty, she had considered if she could continue with the present arrangement—living in sin as his permanent “fiancée”—another word for “fancy-woman.”

  She could not.

  She and her children needed the respectability of marriage. And the financial stability. Never again did she want to be searching down the back of armchairs for lost coins to pay the milkman, or having to tell her daughter they had no money for a day out at the seaside in the long summer school holidays, or money for new shoes, new coats, all the necessities for growing children.

  She had struggled with her conscience and hated that she had even considered marriage as security, as protection. But she would always be a mother first.

  And she knew she could make it work. But she knew it had to be said. “If you want out of this wedding, this . . . us . . . it’s not too late.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’ve not been yourself lately . . .”

  He almost told her he’d been thinking the same of her. But, he reasoned, Joanne was horribly injured. No such excuses for me.

  “This is a huge step for both of us. I will never again tolerate years in an unhappy marriage. So be certain this is what you want.”

  He surprised himself. “I am.” He stared at her. She blushed. “I am certain.”

  “Good. Now go and make us a cup of tea.” She waved him away when he looked about to come over and touch her, as she knew she would cry, and she had had enough of crying.

  “Yes, Mrs. McAllister to be.” And in the kitchen as he filled the kettle, warmed the teapot, then measured out the tea leaves, he knew he was happy. And content. I’m too old for blissful happiness, he thought, and content is good.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mary was trying to piece together what promised to be a sensational exposé of Councilor James Gordon. To keep the documents secret until publication was hard, as they had to be checked, double-checked, names and dates verified. Knowing how news leaked out in a newspaper building, and suspecting that the police had their contacts, and vice versa, she also had to work fast. Her offsider—Derrick, the former Mr. Sleazy, now Mr. Hopeless, Helpless, and Useless—was of no help, often missing, often at the pub. When she received the invitation to a press conference in the City Council chambers, the seat of her investigation, and courtesy of the councilor she was investigating, she was unhappy.

  “What the hell is Gordon up to?” she asked the editor.

  Sandy shrugged, saying, “Search me.”

  The event was well attended.

  “Who does he think he is?” Mary said to a friend and rival, and the only other female journalist in the room. “Press conferences are for the chief constable and the provost.”

  “Maybe he’s on his way to being provost,” Mary’s friend Maureen answered.

  Not if I have anything to do with it, Mary thought.

  He was ten minutes late. Not late enough for the reporters to leave, just late enough to emphasize that he, Councilor James Gordon, was calling the shots.

  “Firstly I want to thank you all for coming.” Councilor Gordon cleared his throat, made a drama out of adjusting his glasses, then began to read from his notes. “It has come to my attention that one of my brothers is implicated in some questionable activity re council building contracts.”

  A swarm of bees seemed to have been dislodged from the rafters of the high-ceilinged room. James Gordon waited. When the buzz quieted, he continued. Mary shook her head, muttering to herself, “Got us all in the palms of his sticky hands.”

  “Unfortunately for me and my family, this brother was in trouble before. But he paid the price.”

  “Three years in Barlinnie,” Mary’s friend said. “Got out in two for good behavior.” They both snorted at that. Someone behind them hissed, “Wheesht.”

  “My solicitor informed me that there is a possibility—yet to be proven, I must stress—that this brother might also be involved in a matter of tax fraud.” Gordon had been reading from the sheaf of notes. At this statement he looked directly at his audience, his face composed in pain and sorrow, just right for a photograph, and the photographers suitably complied. “Now, these are very minor matters, and none of it involves me. However, some members of the press”—he searched the crowd for Mary—“Good morning Miss Ballantyne.” He grinned. “Some journalists from of our esteemed broadsheets could perhaps misinterpret this unhappy state of affairs, but, as they say, you can’t choose your family.”

  That brought a laugh and glances from her colleagues.

  “Pompous wee shite of man, who’s been giving him elocution lessons?” Maureen commented. Receiving no reply, she looked at Mary, saw her bright red face, saw she was trying to control her breathing, and said, “Quite right, hen, say nothing. The cheek o’ that man will be his downfall.”

  “As I said,” Gordon continued, “these activities of my brother could, very indirectly, be seen as compromising my position as a city councilor. Therefore, to maintain my good name, and that of the City Council, I have resigned from all committees relating to building and planning matters, but will continue to serve my constituency, unless the voters decide otherwise at the next election.”

  There came a roar of questions, and the flashes of many cameras. It took some minutes for Gordon to quieten the crowd.

  “I will be happy to answer written questions. Thank you for being here today.”

  Mary despaired that she was the only one not fooled. All read from a script, his grammar was English, his accent cleaned up. She understood Gordon’s strategy and thought he and his solicitors had been clever. And forewarned.

  Councilor Gordon stuffed his notes into his jacket pocket, taking his time with the gesture, and, with his face artfully composed to show gravitas, he made his way down from the podium, two burly henchmen on either side. They cleared a path through the reporters and photographers, making sure no one came too close. Somehow Mary managed to dodge them and planted herself in front of the councilor, so he would have to push her to squeeze past her. Her head came as high as his shoulder.

  She looked up, saw his fury and his smile, and loudly and clearly asked, “Who told you?”

  “Miss Ballantyne, please excuse me, but written questions only.”

  “You’re a disgrace of a man, Councilor Gordon. Who told you?” The councilor’s men grabbed hold of her. One thug had one arm, a second one her other, and they were pulling her to one side. Mary kicked out, catching an ankle. A hand tightened on her wrist. She kne
w she would have a bruise, but thought it worth it.

  “Hey, leave her be.” Maureen pushed at the bullyboy, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Aye, leave the lassie be, she’s only doing her job,” another journalist, someone Mary didn’t recognize, said.

  “Aye, leave her.” Gordon smiled. He reminded her of a gargoyle high up in the cathedral parapets. “Miss Ballantyne is a respected journalist—when she’s not entertaining gentlemen friends.” This he said mostly to entertain the crowd, but also to imply that he knew who her friends were, whom she drank with, who had visited her basement flat. It was enough to make her step aside.

  “Telephone my office for an appointment, Miss Ballantyne. Always happy to cooperate with the Herald.”

  There was little she could do but watch him leave with a posse of newsmen and photographers in his wake.

  “You owe me,” Maureen said. “One o’ thon bruisers deliberately stepped on my foot, and it hurts like hell. So share. Who told Gordon what? And what do you know that I don’t?”

  “I’ll share,” Mary said, “promise. But later. First I have to strangle someone.”

  • • •

  Mary told the editor about the press conference. Then she told him there had to be a leak at the Herald.

  “Maybe,” Sandy said. “It’s too good a story to keep quiet, and journalists are the biggest gossips ever. Bring me proof, and I’ll make sure whoever it was never works on a decent newspaper again.”

  “I’ll bring you your proof,” she said. “Then I want him fired. He’s a disgrace to the profession.”

  Neither said who “he” was, but they both guessed his identity.

  Next she had to think of a way of making her colleague incriminate himself. It took her the rest of the morning to come up with a plan. Then she commandeered a cadet who was not unhappy at helping the star crime reporter, even when it meant retyping fifteen pages of single-spaced documents, most of it figures, and all of it comprehensible. She told him to use a typewriter in the features department, hoping no one would discover what she was up to.