A Small Death in the Great Glen (13 page)

Gino did believe him. He knew the times threw up strange tales. He knew you could never judge a man for what he did in the darkness of war. His innate kindness overtook his doubt. “Hold up, my friend. We will explain all later. First we must feed you.” Gino smiled up at Karl. “My sister and daughter are waiting.”

F
IVE
 
 

The next day there was a distinct late-autumn briskness to the air. The hurry-hurry-it-will-soon-be-winter wind, intent on clearing the last of the leaves, sent them scurrying along the riverbank. They tumbled this way and that, tiny disembodied hands attempting to escape the cruel blast. The wide shallow river, sprinting the short journey from loch to sea, had an icy hue, reflecting the pale blue of the high sky. The snow line on the distant mountains crept lower with each passing day.

Rob, Joanne, Don and McAllister came into the office over the space of two minutes. Discarding coats, scarves, hats, mittens and, in Rob's case, extravagant motorbike gear, they gathered round the table.

“Right, a quick review of what we've got for tomorrow's paper. Firstly, Rob”—McAllister poked the pages of the article before him—“I like this, necessarily brief for the moment, but nicely put. I know all the shenanigans with the Polish man and the tinkers can't be written up, and I can't say as I blame them for wanting to keep out of it, but still, this is good. So, fill me in on the status quo of the lost-but-now-found Polish gentleman.”

“Peter Kowalski is out; the other man, Karl, or Karel I-can't-pronounce-it, was in, all hokey-cokey like, one Pole in, one Pole out, but now he's out on bail too,” Rob informed McAllister. “But my dad, sorry, Mr. McLean the solicitor, believes it will all be fine. He's now working on sorting out the legalities of the Polish not-sailor's status.”

“I still don't get why the tinkers will say nothing,” Joanne started.

“Don't want trouble,” Rob told her.

“But they're the ones who rescued him from the river and can back up his story of his being beaten up.”

“They helped a wanted man. End of story as far as Inspector Tompson is concerned.”

McAllister felt sorry for Rob. “When it's all sorted you can write this, make it a big story, human interest stuff.”

“Aye … when!”

“Patience, laddie, you're only a cub reporter. You'll get there one day. Joanne next. I love the bit you did on the Highland Ball.”

“Don helped a lot.” She was pink with pleasure.

“Right, next. Anyone got anything more on the wee boy in the canal?” The editor raised the one subject they had all unconsciously been avoiding.

“I've got my spies,” Don said, “but nothing so far.”

“I've nothing either,” said Rob. “My contact, she said not much is happening. The fatal-accident inquiry convenes again tomorrow. Of course it would be a day after deadline.”

“We'll make a newspaperman out of you yet. Right, anything else?”

“I like your piece about the boy.” Don looked uncomfortable even slightly admitting he may have got it wrong. “You're right, boss, telling a wee bit about him coming from the Islands to start a new life, his school and his train set, well, it made it all the more real, his death. And leaving out the parents, that was smart.” He noticed Joanne's puzzled look. “In case they did him in or something.”

“Don!”

“Wouldn't be the first time, lass.”

“Thanks, Don.” McAllister perused the layout spread across
the table. “It's not big changes I want, or at least not yet, just a wee bit of the color of life. And yes, death.” He ticked off the pages and passed them over to Don. “Right.” He stood. “Let's get to it, we've a paper to put to bed.”

The sound and smell of a newspaper were quite different on press day. The clatter of the presses, although in a sub-sub-basement, made its way up the three flights of spiral stone staircase. The newsroom smelt of ink on paper, acid on metal, and the many cigarettes needed to produce a newspaper. The office staff had left and the printers were engaged, deep in the dungeons of the building, in their dark secret art of picking up the type, setting it with meticulous precision and very small tweezers, with, courtesy of union rules, only Don McLean allowed to stand in the hallowed area of the stone to check the proof pages as they were printed up. Toward midnight the presses would roll and another
Highland Gazette,
the most recent in ninety-odd years of the
Highland Gazette
would be printed.

But at eight o'clock on this Wednesday night, it was well dark, October black starlight dark. The lights from the eyrie in the heart of the town were a lone beacon; everything except the pubs and the chip shop had closed long since.

Don was working steadily checking pages. The old newspaperman's trick of reading the typeset pages upside down and back to front never ceased to amaze Joanne. Thinking to stir up mischief, Don had thrown out a tidbit of gossip on an outgoing ring of smoke, as he and McAllister finished up their night's work, leaving the printers to get on with their job. “By the way, a friend of yours said to say he was asking for you.”

“A friend?”

“Mr. Grieg.”

“The town clerk? He's no friend—barely an acquaintance.”

“Not what he says,” Don informed him. “Bosom pals you are. So he tells everyone and—”

Before Don could continue, McAllister stopped him.

“Hold on.” Eight o'clock had just finished striking on the church clock. “My stomach thinks ma throat's been cut. What do you say to a fish supper and a dram back at my place?”

“Make that fish, black pudding, a double portion of chips, two pickled onions and a pickled egg.” He counted the order off on his fingers. “All them pickles go well with ma pickled liver.”

On the climb up the brae to McAllister's house, like big boys without their mother to stop them, they tore open the newspaper and tore into the finger-burning fish and chips. The biting North Sea wind made them glad of the hot package keeping at least the hands warm. Once home and with a beer each, they settled down, feet on the fender by the kitchen fire, content.

“He's a fly one, thon Grieg, no doubt about it,” Don started. McAllister waited expectantly. “Look, John, there's a story there. I can smell it. But pinning it down? The man seems to be everywhere when it comes to getting hold of land. At the right price naturally. The land where the tinkers camp every winter—which is now to be industrial land—that place has always been traditional common land where the drovers from the west left their beasts before the auctions. Now the town council is taking it over. Fair enough, times change, there's few drovers left and it is some of the only flat land left in town. But a wee bird, well, two young blokes from the planning office, told me they were uneasy at some of the deals being done. They'll talk. Off the record, naturally.”

“Naturally.” McAllister thought about it. “You have a good nose. If you say there's a story there, well and good. Goodness knows there are enough people in local government everywhere with their fingers in the pie. There's a lot of money in this
postwar building boom and it's not only the cities that have avaricious local governments.” He gazed into the fire, giving it some thought.

“From what I know, I think this is only one man with ideas above his station. Fancies himself as a laird, I hear. He's started by building a great big house, an abomination of a baronial-style mansion, on rezoned land west of town.”

“The
Gazette
can't have a go at the town council, nor its officials, without a cast-iron case.”

“Jenny McPhee, as well as the lads from Planning, know a thing or two.”

“Does she now? And what else?”

He waited, watched, as Don started winding himself up—to tell or not to tell.

“I've come across Bill Ross's name from time to time—in connection with his building contract out west. His was also one of the building firms on Grieg's new mansion, then he gets a contract way out of his territory, across in the west. And although that should be a county council decision, not the town council's, there is talk that Grieg put in a word—at the very least.”

“Joanne's husband seems quite a character.” McAllister sighed. “Right, tell me again, in detail. No, wait. Let's settle in.”

McAllister went out, came back with a coal scuttle, banked up the fire, then fetched two more bottles of beer from the scullery, poured them. He offered Don a cigarette, lit up, then proclaimed, “I'm all ears.”

The next morning, with the new newspaper fresh and crisp in front of them, Joanne, Rob, Don and McAllister sat reviewing that day's edition. Friday was traditionally a quiet, tidying-up sort of day and Joanne was officially not supposed to be at work but she loved the Friday-morning peruse-the-paper get-together.

McAllister finished reading, shook his copy of the
Gazette
back into shape. “Everybody, well done. We're a long way off the newspaper I know we can be, but we're getting there. Thanks.” He rose.

“You'll fill the lass in on the other stuff?” Don wanted out of that particular task.

“Oh. Aye. Joanne, in my office in five minutes.”

He and Don left. Rob shrugged a “no idea” and he too left.

Joanne hated that. Why did she have to wait five minutes, why not tell her immediately? It was like being at school waiting for the interview with the headmistress, knowing you were in for it. Mystified, she sighed, suspicious it would not be good news, fearing it would be one more burden she didn't need.

McAllister had a propensity to sit back and view events with an amused detachment; nothing to do with him, he wasn't a character in the events, just the instigator. In other words, as someone had once said, he was a born editor.

The goings-on with Joanne—her lapses into unhappiness, the way her husband so obviously saw her as a possession, the bruises she tried to but couldn't always hide—he tried not to judge. It appalled him but he had to admit it was not uncommon. A man had a right to do what he did within his family.