A Small Death in the Great Glen (11 page)

“No one would believe anything bad about him.” Margaret was certain.

“Maybe,” said Angus, “but I'm afraid I don't have your faith in human nature, and people believe that the police are always right. ‘No smoke without fire' sort of thing. Peter Kowalski could lose a lot more than his reputation if he ends up with a police record.”

Rob arranged to meet the young ghillie. Young Archie had inherited his father's job and his love of the glens. Even though retired, old Archie Stuart was “fit as a fiddle,” as he told everyone who asked. In late Victorian times the estate was at its peak. As a young boy, he always knew he would follow his father in the service of the clan chief, lord of the vast estate. Vast in square miles. Vast in glens and hillsides. Nearly empty of people. The people, rounded up like cattle, had been driven to the four corners of the
earth. Rob had heard there were more Highlanders in Canada than in the Highlands.

Rob drove up the steep winding track to the gamekeeper's cottage at the top of the glen. The scars of the clearances were visible still. Ruined croft houses, remains of dry stone dykes marking lost fields, now reclaimed by ferns and gorse and whin and heather, a brighter shade of green on the hillsides showing where crofters had fertilized and cultivated the land, now they were empty, except for the sheep. Only ghosts and the faeries remained.

In this particular glen, what land had not been claimed by the sheep was now underwater, flooded to bring electricity to the towns and villages of the rich farmland below, to a booming population born to replace the souls lost in two world wars.

Rob reached the only habitation at the very head of the glen, and with the engine switched off, the silence of nature—with the birds, distant water, a low drone of insects and the wind rustling the birch and rowan and setting the pines to sighing—he took it all in in a second and was enchanted.

“Come in, come in.” The old man welcomed Rob heartily, shaking his hand. The grip was excruciating. Rob tried not to wince.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stuart.”

“Archie, lad, call me Archie. Mind, now they call me Auld Archie. How's your father? And your mother? I remember her fine from the dancing in the Strath. A fine bonnie lass your mother. Didn't think young Angus had it in him to land such a catch.”

“Young Angus?” Rob was bemused. His father young was a strange concept. “It's good of you both to see me.” He nodded to the younger replica standing behind the table.

“Aye well. It's been on my mind to talk to someone. I just never got round to it.”

“There's not much to tell anyhow,” joined in young Archie.
“It's not as if them old crofts have been lived in for near a century. Didn't his lordship sell that one off?”

“Not sell, no. An understanding I heard. And only to Peter,” Auld Archie explained.

“Peter? Peter the Pole?” Rob was excited. His trip up here had not been wasted.

“I thought that was why you came, lad.”

“Oh aye. To help Peter. But we can't help Peter till we find this other man, the other Pole. Peter's been charged with hiding him, Mr. Stuart.”

Father and son looked at each other, shocked.

“Charged, you say? Well, well. That changes things, surely it does.”

“My father's his solicitor, and he got Peter out on bail, “ Rob explained. “But the best way to help Peter is to find this missing sailor and persuade him to turn himself in to the police.”

“Da, you might as well tell him.” A look went between father and son.

“He's no sailor, lad, that I
can
tell you. He wouldn't know a half hitch from a granny knot.”

His son nodded in agreement.

“No, we thought he was Peter's friend. Peter asked us to keep an eye out for him and take up some supplies. Not that your man was grateful. Oh no, always girning on about summat.”

“You say he's gone?”

“Aye, he's gone aright.”

Rob was stunned. “So where is he? Do you know?”

“Aye, we do that, young Rob. A cup o' tea?”

“No thanks.” Rob recovered quickly. He knew Highland etiquette. You waited. Talked about this and that. The son would follow the father, saying nothing except to agree or back him up. “Well, only if you're having one. That would be fine.”

The old man in his widower's kitchen made a fine cup of tea, but no homemade cake appeared, only shop biscuits, and Rob was starving. He tried to sit still as he waited the excruciatingly long time it took the kettle to boil on the wood-burning stove. He tried to stop his fingers tapping invisible typewriter keys, writing up his scoop in his mind. He could see the headline: “Local reporter finds missing Pole.” No, “. . . missing sailor.” No …

“Sugar, lad?”

Early afternoon saw Jenny McPhee, with Joanne at her side, lead a curious procession down the street and stop in the mud-patch garden of a gray-harled council house that looked as though it had been designed to encourage a quick turnover of tenants via the mental asylum or suicide. If there was grass, it was in single blades. Trees were sticks with a side limb or two poking up through the moonscape. Broken prams, rusting bikes, skeletons of cars and vans and broken dreams, made a playground for the tribes of bairns and dogs that roamed the council house scheme.

Joanne had taken the phone call.

“Don, it's for you.”

She couldn't help but hear the conversation.

“No, Jenny, I canny come over. Jenny, I've a newspaper to put out. Aye, uh-huh, no, I haven't the time. No. Really? Hold on a wee minute. …” He turned to Joanne, raising his eyebrows in a question.

“Yes, I'll go.” She had no idea why or where she would be going, but anything involving Jenny McPhee intrigued her.

“Jenny? Joanne Ross will be over. And remember, you'll owe me.”

He scribbled down an address and hung up. When he explained, Joanne was at a loss as to why she should be there.

“A witness, that's what Jenny wants. No one, especially
Inspector Tompson, will ever believe a tinker. They want you there as a witness to whatever the blazes is going on.”

They stopped outside one of the houses. Jenny quietly gave the orders. “One of you, round the back. Jimmy, Geordie, wi' me.”

Firmly clutching her disreputable bag under one arm, she banged on the door. No answer.

“Keith, Keith.” Adding quite unnecessarily, “It's your ma.”

“Keith?”

“Ma eldest.” Joanne was astonished. How many more McPhees were there?

“Not a drop o' common sense that one—for all his fancy education. And living in sin, he is. What's the world coming to? We're Travelers and proud of it. No sin in our family.” She smirked. “Weel, a few close calls maybe.”

She continued banging on the door.

“I'm comin'. Hold yer horses.” A voice echoed down the hallway.

The door was opened by Keith McPhee. That he was a McPhee there could be no doubt. He had the ginger hair and as many freckles as stars in the sky.

“Ma, Jimmy, I've told you. It's no good. I'm not going to change my mind.”

“Where's your manners, boy? Are you no going to ask us in?”

Keith stared at Joanne, glanced at the woman hovering at the end of the hall. “It'll have to be the kitchen. We have a friend staying. He's … he's sleeping.”

Joanne and Jimmy followed Jenny, and the three of them sat round a small table in a small kitchen with Keith standing by the sink, Geordie waiting in the hall. The unknown woman stood by the door, ignored. Joanne was curious; no doubt this was the scarlet woman. Older, late thirties maybe, well dressed, a country
air about her, she would not have been out of place presiding over a Women's Institute meeting. And the kitchen was tidy and nicely decorated with lace tablecloth and lace curtains and a busy lizzie in a pot on the windowsill growing up and over, framing the view toward the firth. Joanne wondered all over again what on earth was going on.

No introductions were made, so Joanne smiled at the stranger. “Joanne Ross, pleased to meet you.”

“Shona Stuart. Pleased to meet you too.” The woman blushed.

“It's no you we've come about, lass. It's your visitor.” Jenny started. Half a second later there was a commotion in the hall. Jimmy McPhee ran out, sending the chair flying. He returned dragging a tall stranger, held on one side by Jimmy and on the other by Jimmy's clone, Geordie.

“You've picked the wrong McPhee to run into, Mr. Missing Polish Seaman,” chortled Jenny. “Ma Jimmy may be half a foot shorter than you but he wis the army bantamweight boxing champion.” As most Scottish fighters were bantamweights, it was quite a claim to fame.

Everyone was still for a moment. In the crowded kitchen, with no one sure of the next move, Joanne took charge.

“Shona. Why don't you and me make a cup of tea and then we can all sit down and sort this out.”

“Aye, lass, a nice cup o' tea would be welcome.” Jenny McPhee reached into the voluminous bag, then handed Shona her contribution, a half bottle of whisky.

“Add a wee drop to mine, would you?”

Shona Stuart was so astonished at Jenny's even speaking to her that she forgot the invasion of her house. And everything else besides.

“She's not such a bad soul, ye know,” said Jenny in a loud
whisper to Joanne. “It's that boy of mine that's led her astray.” This of a man nearing forty.

Another knock at the door.

“That'll be Allie, ma second-youngest,” Jenny explained. “He was out the back in case thon one”—she nodded toward the stranger still held in Jimmie McPhee's embrace—“made a run for it.”

Keith went to open the door to his brother. Rob was there too. So was a windblown and bowlegged Auld Archie Stuart. Rob had given him a lift on the back of the Triumph all the way from Glen Affric.

“Dad!” cried Shona in astonishment.

“Lass,” he replied.

“Archie,” said Jenny.

“Jenny,” came the reply.

“Will somebody please tell me what's going on?” pleaded a completely confused Joanne.