North Sea Requiem (12 page)

Once more it was an observer who noticed McAllister's little shrug of hurt at being shut out. Don thought courtship as complicated as an eightsome reel, and not nearly as much fun. He cared deeply for Joanne, and for McAllister. They were the only family he had. His life had been devoted to the
Highland Gazette,
to a woman who had been murdered, to betting on the horses, and to reaching the end of a bottle of whisky in as short a time as possible.

Love
was not an easy word for him. But if it came to defining the many varieties of love, he would have to admit—but only when well inebriated—that love would include how he felt for Joanne. Maybe stretching the definition would include McAllister, a man he was old enough to father. And Joanne,
dear lass,
as he called her privately, could easily be the mother of his never-to-be-grandchildren. Though even a spell on the rack in the Tower of London would never make him admit this.

Only at lunchtime, when he and Joanne were alone, did Rob say anything. “Don't let him get to you; he thinks women are a delicate species in need of a man's protection. He obviously doesn't know you.”

Joanne shrugged, pretending she didn't know who “he” was. She stood to take her coat off the rack.

“I sneaked a look at Mal's references from the paper in Elgin. Excellent at his job, the letter said, honest, reliable, hardworking. But . . .” Rob grinned making Joanne wait. “I phoned one of the reporters and—”

“Nosy parker,” Joanne teased.

“—she told me that Mal has ‘communication problems' with women. Believes they should be at home ‘minding the bairns,' even though his own wife had a job.”

She burst out laughing. “Ninety-nine percent of the population including my mother-in-law would agree.”

Rob agreed. “And if you tell anyone I've been checking on Mal Forbes, I'll give you a Chinese burn.”

“I never reveal my sources.” Smiling to herself, she ran down the stairs, across the street, off to meet Mae Bell. She was still grinning when she walked into the lunchtime crowd of housewives from out of town on a shopping spree, locals from the banks and solicitors' office, the courts, the town and county offices, and all the various businesses that a capital town catered for.
Communication problems.

Joanne could hear that she had made a mistake suggesting the tearoom. The buzz of conversation drowned out any privacy she had hoped for. The furtive looks she and Mae received from the town's matrons were worse. After a sandwich and tea, Joanne suggested to Mae they walk to her thinking spot, the castle foreground.

“Just as well I bought these.” Mae lifted a leg to show off her new shoes. “Your town has so many cobbled streets, I had to buy flat shoes.”

Joanne had a feeling that Mae Bell was aware that she was lifting her leg just a little too high, that the glances from
assorted males were noted and the frowns from the females unheeded.

“Only you, Mae, could make a pair of lace-up brogues look glamorous.” Joanne smiled, glad to be and be seen in the company of such a woman.

“Oh my,” Mae said as they went towards the railings on the river side of the forecourt, “what a view.” She pointed to the turreted hotel along from the cathedral where she was staying. “There's my room, second on the left, second floor, great to see the view from the other side.”

Joanne looked, saw the room, knew the hotel, fleetingly wondered how Mae could afford a hotel bill for the weeks she had been in the Highlands, but with fifteen minutes before she was due back at work, she needed to hear Mae's opinion.

“I've been served with the court papers for my divorce.”

“Why, honey, that's great news.” She saw Joanne was waiting for more. “It really is good news, isn't it?”

“Aye. But . . .”

“I know, it's a small town. A divorce—so tough for the woman.”

“I knew you would know.”

“Believe me, I know.” Mae pulled out her cigarettes, felt the wind, put them back. “I really do know how prejudice can destroy you.”

Her eyes seemed bright, but Joanne put it down to the wind.

“I'll tell you one day,” Mae said. “It's a story for a long night and a glass or two of wine. But you, dear friend, you stick to your guns. Don't let anyone get to you. And keep your eye on McAllister—he's quite a catch. Might even take him up myself if you don't watch out.”

She was teasing and Joanne didn't mind. She knew she should
be jealous, but somehow Mae Bell's fancying him, even in jest, only put McAllister up in her estimation.

They were smiling and chatting about shoes and weather as they made their way back down the steep slope of Castle Wynd.

Mae Bell may or may not have known, but her approval of McAllister made Joanne reexamine the man who was courting her.
Mae Bell finds him attractive,
she was thinking,
and Mae Bell should know, she's from New York and Paris. So why do I hesitate?

She was back on the same seesaw of emotion. Perhaps fear. And it frustrated her almost as much as it frustrated McAllister.

R
ob McLean was a good friend to Frankie Urquhart, especially in the days and weeks following the death of Nurse Urquhart. He had liked Frankie's mum. He thought her funny and kind and always ready to laugh at the boys' shenanigans—even the memorable nit outbreak, she would laugh about later. He wanted to find whoever had done this to her. He also wanted a front-page scoop.

Rob knew he would one day leave the Highlands. He was certain that one day he would be somebody in the world, and television was the world he would star in. He applied twice to Scottish Television for a position as news reporter. He was turned down, but not left without hope. The rejection letter advised him to finish his cadetship on the newspaper and then reapply. By this summer, after five years training, he would be a fully qualified journalist. Next stop, stardom.

But the coming of McAllister to the
Highland Gazette
had not only changed the newspaper, it had changed Rob. The role of bright young investigative reporter and lead singer in a small-town rock 'n' roll band was alluring, flattering even. He was the proverbial golden fish in a pond of sticklebacks.

His mother, Margaret McLean, saw this. And she was worried.

It was not that she wanted her son to leave home; it was that she did not want him to accept second best. She could see how
entrenched he was becoming at the
Gazette
. She could see him being appointed senior reporter, deputy editor, editor, accepting life—a good life, here in the Highlands, marrying, having children—all of which she knew she and her husband, Angus, would love, but there was more to her only child than that.

Margaret McLean believed that everyone was born with wings but only a few knew how to unfurl them, stand on the edge of the precipice, and fly—or crash; but to die without trying, that was sad. She encouraged Joanne to find her wings and she wanted Rob to unfurl his. She saw in Joanne's daughter Annie a child she felt would need little encouragement; and she herself had flown and tasted the rarefied air and had made a choice, out of love, to settle, to have a child, her wings folded—temporarily. Now it was her son's turn. And in the article she was reading in
The Scotsman,
she believed she might have found the solution.

“Do you know who, apart from printers, would need sulfuric acid?” Rob asked, breaking into his mother's bubble of dreams for her son.

Margaret thought for a second. “Ask your old chemistry master at the academy.” She had a horror of acid. She knew what simple drain cleaner could do to the skin. “And try to think why someone would choose acid . . .”

“As opposed to . . .”

“An axe, a shotgun, a motorcar . . .”

“Poison?”

“Ah . . .” Margaret paused here. “Throwing acid, combined with writing anonymous letters—it all feels female to me.”

“Maybe.” Rob bounced out of his chair and was across the Persian rug and kissing his mother's cheek in one bound. “Thanks.” He stood back, saw her fair hair had now more silver than gold, and with a flash of sadness, he knew she was right; their time together was coming to an end.

The eye contact between them lasted perhaps two seconds before she had to look away.

“I'll be late tonight,” was all Rob said before leaving.

She heard the kitchen door close. Then the gate shut. Then the motorbike start. She shook open the newspaper to the article she'd been reading, folded the pages back, took it to the writing bureau, copied out the information. Rob was never annoyed when she tried to organize his life, his career, and this was a perfect way for him to gain a foothold in the world of television.
No harm in sending for the prospectus,
she thought as she started to write the letter.

•   •   •

“My mother feels it could be a woman who threw the acid,” Rob said.

“Never.” Joanne was indignant at the thought. “A woman knows how disfiguring acid is, how painful, how . . . Never.”

“I'm off to ask my old chemistry teacher the places sulfuric acid can be found. Catch you later.” Rob was gone. He didn't feel like arguing the point. Whoever threw it, male or female, it was a shocking thing to do, in Rob's opinion; it showed a viciousness, yes, but was cowardly too.

McAllister stopped typing. He was thinking about Margaret McLean's idea. He looked across at Don, who shrugged. Since the death of his wife six months previously, Don McLeod worked, lived quietly, chatted and joked, but with no real interest: he was living a surface life; without love he was half a man—a cliché he would strike out with his wee red pencil if presented to him in an article, but true nonetheless.

“I'm not much help,” Don said to McAllister, not bothered that Joanne was listening. “Since I've all but given up the drink, I'm no good at thinking.”

“Maybe, but you're much more handsome,” Joanne said.

“Better stake your claim, McAllister, she's almost divorced . . .” Don saw her blush. “Thanks all the same, it does an old man good to flirt wi' a bonnie lass.” He gave her a pat on the arm, slid off his stool, and went down to the print room with a sheaf of copy to be set.

She watched him. She worried about him. Since the death of his wife, he seemed so much older. And since he was the nearest she had come to a real father, his well-being mattered to her. Greatly. She shook her head. Beneath this news story, she sensed an undercurrent. The intent may not have been murder. It may have been to disfigure only.
Only
? She thought.
Evil,
she felt.
But why? Why throw acid?

“Is that what you think? That a woman could have done this?” Joanne asked McAllister. As all at the
Gazette
were writing about, thinking on, and investigating the attack, there was never a need to explain what “this” referred to.

“I think a woman could have written the letters,” he began. “But the little I know of that particular crime—revenge, wanting to destroy them by disfiguring them—is that it's usually men against women. A woman doing this? I couldn't say.”

“I'm not sure I'd want to live if I was that disfigured—not being able to speak; breathing and eating really difficult. Someone must have really hated her.”

Joanne had been brought up in the hell and damnation version of Christianity. She knew that if there was love, which she believed there was, there surely must be its opposite. Hate. She thought she knew love. And dislike—occasionally intense dislike. But hate?

She sighed. “McAllister, I've had enough of miserable news. Let's go to the pictures. Something cheerful.” She reached for the
Gazette
. “Doris Day? She sings that song ‘Que Sera, Sera.' You know the one . . .”
The one you love,
she was going to say, knowing
he hated it.
One o' those songs that get stuck in your head and drives you to drink,
he told her when the song had blasted out of the wireless for the umpteenth time.

McAllister was saved by the phone. Joanne answered. “Yes, he's here. DI Dunne,” she said as she handed over the receiver.

“Yes, they're all here.” McAllister was nodding and doodling the chemical equation for sulfuric acid on a sheet of copy paper. “Aye. Right. Use my office.” He put down the phone, “Sorry, Joanne, we'll have to make the pictures some other night. The police want to interview the printers, so it's best I stay here.”

“Liar. You're not in the least sorry.” She laughed. He grinned back. “McAllister, I was teasing. I would never put you through a Doris Day film.”

It was the last cheerful moment in what turned into a long and fractious day.

•   •   •

Later in the morning, Rob came in, talking as he stripped off the layers of protection needed to drive a motorbike in March in the Highlands. “Mr. George, at the academy, he says finding sulfuric is not hard if you know where to look.”