Does Your Mother Know?

by Maureen Jennings

  Sondra suddenly turned nasty. “She doesn’t have any clothes. She doesn’t need any. We don’t get out much.”

  “Did you leave her alone for the last two nights?”

  “She was all right. A girl has to have fun sometimes. I can’t stay home all the time.”

  “She’s going to the hospital.”

  I suppose my contempt was unmistakable. Sondra yelled at me, “No she’s not, she’s mine,” and suddenly, without warning, she flew at me, hands like claws ready to scratch whatever she could reach. I grabbed her by the wrists, but she struggled violently. I tried to get her arm pinned behind her back, but she was fighting too hard. I managed to get my leg behind her knees and she fell to the floor, me on top of her. There were a couple more violent upheavals, then suddenly she lay still. I thought she was playing dead, ready to attack again as soon as I relaxed, it’s a common trick, but as I moved cautiously away I saw that she had stopped breathing.

  After that things moved at warp speed. Fortunately, the para-medics had answered my first call promptly and they were at the door even as I realized what had happened. They couldn’t revive her. The boyfriend sat and stared. There had to be an inquiry, of course, by the Special Investigations Unit, and I was temporarily suspended from duty. The inquest revealed a damaged heart from constant intake of alcohol and drugs. Sondra DeLuca could have had a heart attack at any time. However, the boyfriend was aboriginal, Sunny was probably mixed race, and suddenly we were into another ball game entirely. He said I had handled her roughly, thought I might even have hit her. There were no bruises on her body to substantiate this accusation, so it was dismissed. I was completely exonerated of misconduct, but I knew how angry I’d been. How much I had wanted to hurt the self-involved wretch who was Sondra DeLuca. It had nothing to do with race, but there were many people who didn’t believe that. I was literally spat on, yelled at, and generally the target of a corrosive hatred I could do nothing about. Sunny was immediately put into the care of the Children’s Aid, but I had seen the look in her eyes, and I wept for her many times in the solitude of my own room. I had to undergo compulsory sessions with the police shrink, which was probably a good thing, although I doubt I was an easy subject. Not surprisingly, Sondra herself had been the object of terrible neglect and her life had been a miserable one, but I realized I hardly cared, and with that knowledge, I decided to resign.

  All my pals tried to talk me out of it, but I’d had it up to the eyeballs with policing. It was Paula who, yet again, came forward as the saviour who in some ways knew me better than I knew myself. She had been with the OPP special services branch for two years, and she loved the work. “You can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, pun intended. You’re a cop. Come and join me. You’ve got the experience and the brains and you don’t have to look at the likes of Sondra with an O ever again.” So I applied, got the job, and had been there exactly one week when Jim suggested this conference.

  I didn’t go back to sleep, and daylight came again at four-thirty. At five I got out of bed, took a long shower, then sat at the window again, watching the rest of the world slowly wake up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At seven-thirty, I went downstairs to the dining room. A sign on the serving table said “PLEASE HELP YOURSELF. BABY BORN LAST NIGHT.” I was definitely not in the mood for polite conversation with other guests, so I poured some coffee, took a muffin from the basket, and was leaving to go back upstairs when Gill walked in.

  “Chris. So glad I caught you.”

  His expression was serious, and my stomach did the usual lurch.

  “Any news?”

  “Not about your mother, I’m afraid, but there’s something I want to show you. I’d like your professional opinion.” He glanced around. “Do you mind if we go to your room?”

  “Of course. Grab a coffee and muffin.”

  He followed me upstairs while I tried to remember if I’d left any unmentionables strewn around.

  Whew. I hadn’t.

  The room wasn’t exactly luxuriously furnished and there was only one chair and the bed to sit on. I took the chair.

  “So what’s up?”

  He had a briefcase with him, and he opened it and took out an envelope and a piece of paper, both of them enclosed in plastic sheets.

  “This letter was waiting for me at the station.” The envelope was addressed to him, printed by hand. The letter, also printed, on a single sheet of paper, read as follows:

  MESSAGE TO SERGEANT GILLIES: THIS IS A

  WARNING. YOU MUST STOP THE WHITE

  DOGS. THEY ARE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL

  AND WILL CAUSE TROUBLE ON ALL

  OF US. THEY INTEND TO ACT WHEN THE

  ROYAL PERSONAGE COMES TO LEWIS.

  YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE. YOU MUST

  STOP THEM!

  “Can I take it out of the sheet?”

  “Of course.”

  I removed the piece of paper, holding it by the corner, and studied it and sniffed it. Then I did the same with the envelope. There was nothing discernible to the human nose, anyway.

  “It was on the windshield of the police van that was in the parking lot. One of the constables handed it to me when I arrived this morning.”

  “You must have a high profile in Stornoway, Sergeant Gillies.” He smiled. “I’ve never thought so until now. Inspector Harris is the one who gets all the press.”

  “I wonder why it wasn’t addressed to him.”

  “No idea. What do you deduce from the thing, Madam Sherlock?”

  “Hey, we’re talking two lectures here, not a lifelong study.”

  “That’s more than I’ve got.”

  The printing was neat — there was no sign of a psychotic mind at work. There was no blood, semen, or excrement smeared over the page. However, I didn’t have much doubt that the warning should be taken very seriously indeed.

  “Who are the White Dogs? Not canine, I assume?”

  “They’re a fringe group that popped up about two years ago, claiming to be Gaelic separatists. They say they want all absentee landlords kicked out and that the Gaelic language and culture should be exclusive throughout the Hebrides. They want the Islands to be self-governing.”

  “My God, sounds like some of the reactionaries we have in Quebec. We’ve already had an expensive referendum about it. Separatism was defeated.”

  “The group doesn’t speak for everybody, of course, and what they propose is ridiculously impractical.”

  That sounded familiar too.

  “Are they a violent group?”

  “Not in the usual sense of the word. They use embarrassment and so-called shock tactics. Last year, when the Queen visited Stornoway, a group of about five men in traditional kilts were standing with the crowd just outside the town hall. As she came out, they turned and lifted the kilts. Underneath they were mother naked. Then they hung their placards on their rear ends. ‘Don’t screw us any more’ was the gist of it.”

  “Did she see them?”

  “I don’t think so. By the merest good luck, a little lassie from the school stepped forward from the opposite direction to hand her some flowers. The constables hustled the men out of the way.”

  “How did the locals feel about that?”

  “Most of them thought it was outrageously bad-mannered. We’re a polite bunch, and the majority of islanders are very pro-royal. There was another incident last year. A minor aristo who owns a lot of land here came for a visit to meet his tenants. He received a package, and inside was a long-dead and stinky hedgehog and a card saying, ‘We were here first. Get out or die.’”

  “That’s a much more threatening tone.”

  “It is. And the man turned right around and went home. We weren’t even sure if the group responsible was the local animal-activist group, who were upset about the culling of the hedgehogs on Uist, or if it was the White Dog gang.”

  “Why the name?”

  “There’s a legend on the island that the ghost of a w
hite collie will appear to give warning when the land is threatened. Apparently the collie really did exist decades ago and was responsible for numerous heroic acts, rescuing sheep or unconscious shepherds. People swear they’ve seen it running across the moor when the night is dark and the moon is on the wane.”

  He reached into the briefcase again and pulled out a folder. “I brought these newspaper clippings to show you. This has been since January.”

  There were four, and each incident they described occurred about a month apart. Several of the greens at the golf course had been chopped up. A note was sent to the Gazette. “This seems to be the only thing the landlords care about. We have been hacked around ourselves.” The second incident was a dump of fish offal on the front door of the council office. “Your performance stinks. Get out.”

  Both of the other incidents involved smelly refuse being smeared around public buildings. One of them was Sarah MacDonald’s realestate office. The reason given for targeting it was that it was dealing with incomers, and therefore actively destroying the local culture.

  “Do you know who they are?” I asked Gill.

  “We got the five men involved in flashing Her Majesty, but they were pretty closed-mouthed. They said they were acting alone, no organization or secret society. When the other incidents happened we questioned them, but they all had alibis.”

  “But you think there might be more of them.”

  “Exactly. That one there with the dumping of the offal in front of the city hall, it happened in the middle of the night, but a tourist with a toothache, who was sitting by the harbour, says he thought the driver of the truck was a woman.”

  “So you would describe them more as a nuisance fringe than anything else?”

  “That depends, doesn’t it, on whether or not you’re at the receiving end. The real-estate office had to close down while the entrance was cleaned up.” He sighed. “In this day and age of bombs and assassinations, I suppose what they do is small potatoes, but frankly, it pisses me off. I’m one of those who find it outrageously bad-mannered.”

  There was an official police report sheet in the folder, with mug shots of the five flashers and their vital statistics. All were men under thirty, the thug age. One was scowling into the camera, even though I’m sure he’d been told to keep his face straight. He had long, wiry black hair and a bushy beard. His height was given as six foot six inches, age twenty-seven and his name was Black John Matthews.

  “Is that his legal name?”

  “I don’t know if it’s on his birth certificate, but that’s what he answers to.”

  “Any priors?”

  “A string of drunk and disorderly. Minor assault charges. He’s been up on something or other since he was a lad. In my opinion, he doesn’t have an honest principle in his body. He’d follow any group that offered him the chance to kick in a few windows.”

  “The others?”

  “Nothing. Upright citizens. That one, Murray, was a school-teacher. Currently out of work. The other three do odd jobs around Stornoway. Murray’s the one who’d be the thinker.”

  I replaced the originals in the plastic and picked up the copies.

  “Okay. I’ll deal with the content in a minute. Some of this is obvious. The printing is neat and the lines are straight across the page. The punctuation is sophisticated. A colon correctly placed after ‘GILLIES.’ An exclamation point after ‘THEM.’ No crossing out. There are no grammatical errors unless you count, ‘will cause trouble ON all of us.’ Which isn’t quite English.”

  “It’s a Gaelic construction. We say things like, ‘the cold is on you,’ or ‘the Gaelic is on you.’ Don’t ask me why.”

  “We can assume then that the writer’s first language is Gaelic. Not a huge help, considering where we are, but something. The words ‘THE ROYAL PERSONAGE’ are odd. Almost a joke. Certainly old-fashioned and very formal.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know exactly who was coming? We don’t always know ourselves until the last minute. The security thinks it’s safer that way. Do you think it’s a man or a woman?”

  “A guess? I’d say a woman. Neat printing, polite language. But either way, this is definitely an educated person, maybe older generation, although the expression Royal Personage could be deliberately misleading. This is not an ‘official’ warning. Typically a group spokesman would be more aggressive. ‘If the prince comes here, there’ll be trouble, we’re warning you,’ or ‘We’re giving you fair warning,’ something like that. The writer says, ‘they’ as opposed to ‘us.’ She hasn’t identified with the group, although ‘THEY ARE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL’ is an interesting choice of words and suggests ongoing familiarity. She doesn’t say ‘THEY ARE OUT OF CONTROL.’ There is urgency in the repetition of ‘YOU MUST STOP THEM,’ with the exclamation point, and the underlining of ‘YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE.’ If you look at the other side of the paper, you can see how heavy the underline was.”

  “I noticed you sniffed at the paper. Looking for essence of rosewater?”

  “Don’t knock the power of the olfactory organ. We had a series of hate letters come to the station a couple of years back. There was a faint-but-distinct odour of disinfectant to all of them. We all went around sniffing and smelling to identify it and finally we traced it to a germicidal hand soap. Our forensic shrink suggested we were looking for some guy with the Lady MacBeth complex. In other words, he washed his hands several times a day because he felt so guilty, probably about excessive masturbation.”

  “I hate to imagine how you went about the questioning on that one.”

  “There was a maintenance guy who fitted the profile. Raw, clean hands and all. He had a grudge against the entire station because he thought we discriminated against him. He wasn’t Black, by the way. He was an American.”

  Gillies was gazing at me with exaggerated admiration. “Och. I’ll bet you were the one who identified the smell.”

  “Good guess. I hope that’s not based on your perception of the length of my nose.”

  He laughed. “Not at all. You have a perfect nose. Not too long nor too short.”

  He wasn’t joking. I rustled the piece of paper.

  “I don’t think there’s much else I can say except that it would be worth checking up on the bare-assed five. So far they’ve stayed with scatological pranks, but the implication is that something much more serious could occur. How do you think the possibility of a royal visit was leaked, by the way?”

  “You heard Janice MacIver. Somebody puts two and two together when they see increased security, then one of the constables tells his girl, who tells her friend, and it’s off like a brush fire.”

  “Janice mentioned Rosie. Is she one of your support staff?”

  “She is. I’ll have a word with her. Your point being that the White Dogs need to have access to the information if they’re going to do anything?”

  “Exactly.”

  He gathered up the papers. “I really appreciate this, Chris. I’ll be off now to have a word with Jock and send someone to chat up the lads. I’ll come back about a quarter past one and drive you over to Tormod’s funeral.”

  “Do you have time?”

  “I do. Besides it’s part of my job.”

  I didn’t quite get what he meant by that, but he was in a hurry now. I walked with him to the ancient elevator, hoping he would-n’t have any trouble with the royal visit, but rather happy I’d been able to show off my stuff. It had quite chased my blues away for the time being.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Gill arrived punctually and dressed in a smart civvy suit of grey pinstripe with a discreet blue tie. We exchanged compliments, he about my hat, me about the tie. His black eye was much less noticeable, and I commented on it.

  “Did you put a steak on it?”

  “No, actually I used a couple of leeches.”

  “What!”

  “It’s true. I know it sounds horrible, but the little buggers really work. They suck out all the congealed bl
ood.”

  “Oh, my gawd. I think I’ll stick with Polysporin.”

  On the drive over, he told me that he’d sent out a constable to talk to the flashing five. Murray was laid up with a broken ankle, so he was out of commission. The other three were sufficiently intimidated by a friendly warning, but they hadn’t been able to find Black John, which concerned him.

  “Let’s hope we get passed over in favour of St. Andrews.”

  The Na Gearrannan church was on a hill, just past the turnoff to Tormod’s house and, as we drove into the village, I could see people were making their way there, walking in small groups, men in front, women following behind. They were all in sober clothes, the woman mostly in black coats and skirts, the men in suits.

  Gill parked the car and we went over to the church, where a young man ushered us in and told us to take a pew near the rear. The church was almost full, people speaking softly to each other, all of them in their Sunday best. All of the women were behatted and I was glad Lisa had warned me. I took a quick glance around. Although I didn’t really expect Joan to show up, you never knew.

  On the rack in front of us were two black hymnals, and the pew itself was unpadded and so straight as to be uncomfortable. The church was quite large and austere. There was not a stained window to be seen, nor a cross or statue, nor the embroidered altar cloths that I was used to. In fact, there wasn’t an altar as such, just a raised pulpit reached by two curving stairs. A low partition separated this part of the church from the rest of the congregation, and sitting in front of it were half a dozen men, one of them Andy MacAulay. Coral-Lyn was in the closest pew, and the coffin, covered by a white linen cloth, was on a low platform at the end of the aisle.

  “Who are those men?” I whispered to Gillies.

  “They’re all the church elders. They run things.”

  A door at the rear opened and a tall man with the white dog collar of a minister, swept out and began to mount the stairs to the pulpit. At the same time, Lisa scurried in from the rear of the church. She was the model of decorum in her long black skirt and jacket. The skirt had a slit that was thigh-high but, hey, it was a skirt nonetheless. But she couldn’t resist the thumb to the nose in her choice of hat. It was a red straw, and the wide brim was encircled with large, black-silk roses. It was a gorgeous hat that screamed for attention, and she certainly got a lot of it as she walked briskly down the aisle, her stiletto heels clicking on the hard wooden floor. A woman seated in the pew across from Coral-Lyn slid over so that Lisa could get in.