A Small Death in the Great Glen (18 page)

The back door slammed. Bill walked into the middle of the confrontation, took one look at the ensemble and gave a dangerous grin. “What's she done this time?”

Annie tried to make a break for the safety of her mother.

“She cheeked Brown Owl.” Tawny Owl had a sudden insight as to how ridiculous this sounded. “It's serious.”

“Cheeked Brown Owl, eh? What did you say?” To Bill, his eldest daughter was trouble. Had been even before she'd been born.

“She told the most fantastic tales.”

“She's always havering, that one,” Bill informed her.

The woman, put out by Bill's attitude, by Joanne's lack of contrition and most of all by Annie's lack of apology, scolded him as though he was the nine-year-old.

“It's no a laughing matter. A child is dead.”

“We are all well aware of the tragedy,” Joanne said coldly. “But what has that to do with this?”

Bill, irritated, rebuked in his own house, sat in his chair by
the fire and waved at the woman to explain. “All right, all right, what happened?” He was beginning to scare Joanne. She prayed their visitor would not smell the alcohol on his breath—the gossip would be all over town by tomorrow.

“For the storytelling topic—for a badge—Annie chose ‘my biggest fright.' She then proceeded to use the tragedy of that poor wee soul's death to tell a ridiculous tale of a hoodie crow taking the boy off into the sky, she said, then dropping him in the canal. Brown Owl had to give her a good telling-off, pointing out how ridiculous, not to say distasteful, her story was. The child wouldn't be told—she shouted at Brown Owl and refused to stand in the corner.”

“She said it was a big fib,” shouted Annie. “It isn't, and she said I was telling lies.” She wailed: “But it's true. A hoodie crow
did
get him.”

Wee Jean, eavesdropping at the top of the stairs, clutched the banisters, shivered in fear and sympathy.

“Don't shout.” Bill glared in warning. “Of course you were lying. You're always making things up.”

“Bill, can I have a word?” Joanne whispered.

“It's true,” Annie persisted. “I did see a hoodie crow. He wrapped Jamie up in his wings.”

“Enough o' your lies.”

Joanne tried to shoo the woman out the door. “Thank you, Tawny Owl. Leave it to us. We'll speak to her.”

“That child and her lies. She has to learn. She has to apologize or else she'll be asked to leave. And then she'll never be allowed to fly up to the Guides.”

Annie let out a howl at that. Then her father grabbed her by her wrist, dragging her toward the stairs.

Joanne pushed the startled Tawny Owl out the front door, slamming it behind her.

“Wait. Bill. Please. Listen.”

“You always stick up for her. No wonder she gets in trouble.” He was halfway up the stairs, dragging Annie, who was desperately clinging onto the banisters.

“Let go.” He smacked her hand free. “It's time you learned a lesson.”

“Mum, Mum!” The child reached out for her mother. Wee Jean shrank into a corner of the landing, sobbing. Joanne stood helpless at the bottom of the stairs, unable to intervene, her own pain still fresh.

“It's true, Mum! I didn't lie. I saw it.” Annie wouldn't give in. “Mum, I'm telling the truth. You promised. … Mum!” She wailed the accusation.

The sound of leather on bare flesh, once, twice, not stopping, cut through Joanne. Still she stood still for too long, an eternity, half a minute, paralyzed.

“Enough. Stop it.” She was up the stairs and into the bedroom, grabbing the army belt in midstrike.

Bill had done enough to satisfy his anger. He threw the belt to the floor and yelled at Joanne, right in her face, “See what you've done! See what happens when you go traipsing off to your precious job! You can't look after your own bairns properly.” With a growl of “I'm sick o' the lot o' you” he pushed past her. The two girls and their mother stopped breathing for a long second. The back door slammed.

Joanne picked up Jean and put her into her bed, surrounding her with her rag dolls, trying to soothe her sobs. She then crept into Annie's room, where the child gave an occasional heaving sob and hiccup, tears all cried out. The girl lay on her tummy, a pillow over her head, too sore to turn over. The injustice and betrayal burned deep and would take a long time to dim, if they ever did. Her mother had lied. Her mother hadn't protected her.

When Joanne, her own tears dripping onto the bedclothes, tried to stroke her daughter's shoulder, an arm lashed out, a leg kicked her away.

“I told the truth.” The child could barely get the words out. “You promised. You said I'd no get into trouble if I told the truth.” She sniffed deeply, wiped her nose on the pillow slip. “I hate him,” she said, and turning to her mother, “An' I hate you too.”

The weight of Abraham settled on Joanne; she had sacrificed her child to protect herself.

S
EVEN
 
 

Rob was furious.

“The Aberdeen paper has stolen my scoop. All I'll get published is a few lines stating that Karl unpronounceable has been arrested. Six days after the event. Their wee worm of a reporter has someone inside the procurator's office feeding him information.”

“What do you expect? They're a daily and this is big news.” Don didn't look up; he was stabbing away at Rob's prose with a stub of pencil. “Maybe the troll at the typewriter filled him in on more than the essentials.”

Rob smirked at Don's description of the legal secretary.

“I recall there was talk of you and the lady in question once walking out together.”

Don snapped. “Who told you that? That was twenty years ago.”

“Oh, so there was something?”

“Never you mind, and never believe all you hear. Especially not in
this
office. If you want to find out the leak, start with a certain inspector who has no time for foreigners, nor smart-alec boys wi' a well-connected father.”

Grabbing his corrected proof sheets, Don made for the door.

“Don't forget. They are a daily—they're all about headlines. We're a weekly, we do more judicious, considered pieces.”

“I'm not sure I know how to do deep articles; you always cut them to shreds.”

Before they could continue, Joanne walked in. Don looked at
the clock. “Not like you to be late.” Then he peered at her drawn face. “You're right peely-wally, are you no well?”

“I'm perfectly fine, thank you.”

He made for the door but not before Joanne heard him mutter something ending in “. . . women's troubles.”

Rob took one look and he too made for the door.

“Gazette.”
Joanne had been hoping for some peace in the empty office but the phone had not stopped ringing. The only topic of inquiries was the Polish man. Some wanted more information, some wanted to give information, some knew it had to be him because he was a stranger, others said it was because he was a foreigner, and others still said they had seen a strange man hanging about—not up the canal, just a strange man hanging around the town. Joanne told everyone to call the police station.

Strange men—ha, plenty of them around, was her conclusion as she hung up on one particularly verbose caller.

Ten seconds' peace and the phone rang again.

“Gazette.”

“You sound as fed up as me,” Chiara said.

“Aye, well, things are not easy right now.”

“Can you come over later? I really need to talk.”

“I'd love to but it's hard right now. And I can't get out of the office this dinnertime.” She could but she wouldn't. The thought of facing anyone, even her best friend, after last night, made her shake. “Then I have to take time off to meet the girls from school. Bill insists.” She couldn't say that now that Karl had been arrested, the girls would again walk home alone—a sixth sense stopped her. But the fib felt uncomfortable. “Tonight is out.” She didn't explain. The look Annie had given her as she said cheerio outside the school this morning would haunt her for a long long time. “Tomorrow's out—press day. And now Bill insists I keep
my promise to go out west with him on Friday.” Though how they would get through a whole three days together she could barely imagine. “I'm sorry, Chiara, I—”

“Joanne, I'm really worried. So are Papa and Aunty Lita. Peter is absolutely shattered by the news. We've had phone calls, an anonymous letter, and this morning, as he walked to work, someone spat at Papa. The chip shop will open as usual but the café is closed for today at least.”

“Why on earth … ?”

“Because some people think we hid a child murderer, that's why.” Maybe even you, Chiara thought. “But you're busy, so I'll catch you later.”

Joanne was left with the phone in her hand, feeling even more wretched, when McAllister walked in.

“Where is everyone?”

“Out.”

He too retreated; his office was safer than facing a woman in one of her moods, he thought. Or was there something more?

Half an hour later, remembering past barbs about not informing McAllister of any and every piece of information that came her way, Joanne walked across the landing and knocked on the half-open door.

“Chiara Corelli called,” she reported. “They are being bothered by anonymous phone calls. She says people think they hid the Polish fellow, Karl, the one who killed wee Jamie.”

“Hold on.” He waved her to a seat with his cigarette, like a magician's wand, making smoke circles in the air. “First of all, the man, Karl,
has
been arrested, but that doesn't make him guilty. …”

“But it stands to reason, he must have done it, the police wouldn't arrest him otherwise.”

“No, it doesn't stand to any reason. Let's see what evidence
the procurator presents. Just because Karl is a stranger in the town, just because he is
not
Scottish—”

“But he went missing the night the wee boy vanished.”

“—just because there was the coincidence of them both going missing on the same night—”

“Nobody in this town could possibly kill a wee boy.”

That was Joanne's firm and final reply.

Aye, McAllister thought to himself, why bother with a trial? They would, the whole community, have him hanged, drawn and quartered out on the castle forecourt at dawn, if they could.

“Joanne, we newspaper people, we're supposed to be unbiased. Let's wait and see, shall we? Innocent until proven guilty? Now, tell me what Chiara Corelli said.”

Cycling home after work, Joanne was past the corner shops before she realized what she had seen. Or not seen. The chip shop was in darkness. A recent institution in a town where ration cards and war were a not very distant memory, it stood in forlorn darkness, large pieces of board crisscrossed with battens of two-by-two covering the wide window space. Usually, the shop was lit up like an oceangoing liner, the scenes in the windows a tableau of town life. Through the fogged-up glass could be seen customers sitting at a long bench, waiting patiently, chatting to each other or reading the paper. On the high counter stood large jars containing pickled onions and pickled eggs in dark brown vinegar, which always reminded Joanne of anatomical exhibits of some obscure animal brains. At this time in the evening there were usually at least half a dozen people sitting at the small group of tables with salt, vinegar and sauce in large bottles on red-and-white check oilcloth. Fish suppers were posh, served on plates, with a knife and a fork; tea came in a cup with saucer and orange cordial, bright as a traffic light, came in a glass.