Everything She Forgot (22 page)

She nodded, once.

“What were you dreaming about?”

“A monster was . . . was coming to get me,” she said, between stolen breaths.

“A monster? I wouldn't let any monsters near you, would I?” She looked at him, the same wariness in her eyes as earlier, but then shook her head. He got a tissue for her and she dried her eyes, then looked around at the hotel room, as if she had forgotten where she was.

The film he was watching was full of guns and fighting, so he changed channels, but only found the news again, or a soap opera. He turned the television off.

“Settle down now,” he said to her. “Lie down and try to get back to sleep. We have another long day of driving ahead of us tomorrow.”

She lay down, her big eyes open.

“Try and sleep.”

“I like to be read to, but you said you can't.”

“I could sing to you.”

“OK.”

He sat on the bed opposite, facing her, and began a quiet rendition of “Sweet Caroline.” She giggled and turned on to her side to face him, two hands tucked under her cheek. When he finished, she asked him to sing it again. He sang instead, “Song Sung Blue.” which she thought she knew and tried to sing along at the chorus.

When he was finished, he tucked her in and pulled the covers up to her chin, the way he remembered his mother doing when he was little. He bent and kissed her forehead. She smelled of lemon shampoo. The skin of her cheek was clear and perfect, and he touched it briefly with his thumb, which seemed rough
and old and dark in comparison. He thought he had never felt anything so soft and smooth as the skin of her cheek.

“Why can't you read?” she asked him.

“I dunno, I just can't.”

“Can you write?”

“I can write my signature: GM.”

“But why can't you read and write?
I
can read and write.”

“I just . . . was never good at school.”

“You mean you weren't clever?”

“No, I was the dunce.”

“What's a dunce?”

“Someone who's stupid.”

“Why were you the dunce?”

“I don't know why. I just . . . was never able to do the lessons.”

“But even people who're not good at school can read. Everyone can read and write even if they're not good at it.”

“Can they?”

Moll nodded, her mouth hidden under the edge of the bedsheet, making her blue eyes seem bigger. As always when she was facing him, he found that he spoke to the eye that looked straight at him and not the eye that turned away, so that after a while he was unaware of her squint.

“Well, when I was wee, I used to write with my left hand.”

“So do I,” said Moll suddenly, raising her face up off the pillow and smiling at him. She held her left palm outstretched toward him, and he touched it with his.

“And that's OK now, is it? The teachers allow that?”

Moll shrugged and nodded.

“When I was wee, the teachers would belt me when I used my left hand. Do they have the belt at your school?”

Moll shook her head.

“Well, it was the nuns, you see . . . They wanted me to use my right hand and so every time I picked up a pencil with my left, I got it. Sister Agatha was the worst. I still remember her. She was tall and fat and in her habit she looked like a big, giant . . . penguin.”

Moll giggled. “Giant penguin.”

“Aye, but you wouldn't laugh if you saw her. I remember one day, she told me to come forward and hold my hands out for the belt. And I got up and went to the front of the class and did as she asked. You had to hold your hands like this, one hand under the other, so it was harder for you to pull away.” George demonstrated, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding out his hands toward Moll. She was rapt, listening to him. “One day, I remember, there was a hair on my hand. It might have been my own, or one of the girls', I don't know,” he said, winking at her. “But anyway, when Sister Agatha belted me she caught the hair, and it cut the palm of my hand so that it was bleeding. The class saw the blood after that first crack, and I remember they all just gasped . . .” George paused again to mime the shock of his classmates. Moll was frowning now, her small mouth pursed together. “But it didn't stop Sister Agatha. All she did was ask me to change hands, then she kept on till she'd finished.”

“Did your mum and dad not complain?”

George grinned and pinched her cheek. “My mother had a lot to complain about, believe me, but her whole life I never heard her utter a word of complaint and my father, well . . .”—George looked away—“well no, he wasn't bothered.”

Moll was silent and serious, looking down at her fingernails, and George was sorry that he'd told her the story. She had been frightened already, and now he had scared her again. He
sighed and looked away, and was about to suggest another Neil Diamond song when she put her hand on his.

“
I
can teach you to read and write,” she said, licking her lips and sitting up suddenly.

“Don't be silly,” he told her. “I'm a lost cause.”

She climbed out of bed and padded barefoot to the desk, and brought back a sheaf of hotel paper and a pencil. There was a large black Bible on the bedside table and she opened it, and for a moment George thought this was to be his reading book, but she only placed it on the bed as a hard surface for them to write upon.

She smoothed the paper over the Bible, took the pencil in her left hand, and wrote
, Aa
,
Bb
,
Cc
.

“You try,” she said, giving him the pencil.

“I'm tired, can we do it tomorrow? You need your sleep.”

“It's only
three letters
, we can do the rest of the alphabet tomorrow.”

George sighed and picked up the pencil in his right hand. He held the pencil the way his brother Peter held a knife.

“No,” she whispered to him, opening his large palm with her small fingers and prizing the pencil from his grasp. “Use your left hand, if you're like me and you're left-handed.”

He put the pencil into his left hand and she tried to move it into position, but then pulled the pencil from him again.

“Look at me,” she said, kneeling on the bed. “Look how I hold it. Can you do this?”

She handed George the pencil and he copied how she had held it.

“Good,” she said, “well done. Now try and do the
A
.”

He made an attempt, but it was messy and not joined together.

“I can do a
G
,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly.

Moll bounced from the bed again and took another pencil from the desk.

“Let's do it together,” she insisted, writing slowly beside him each of the three strokes of the letter
A
, waiting for him to finish. She wrote on her stomach, propped on her elbows, with the tip of her tongue between her lips and her face very close to the page.

Nevertheless he watched her and made the three strokes when she did. To his surprise, the letter looked good.

“See, you
can
do it,” she said, smiling at him, up close to his face, so that he could see the pink of her gums where her baby teeth had been.

“That's only one letter,” he said. “I'll have a problem with the others.”

She leaned in close to him and put her forefinger against his lips to silence him. “There's only twenty-six of them, and you'll learn them in no time. I'm a good teacher. I want to be a teacher when I grow up.”

“You are a good teacher,” he said, replacing the Bible and putting the pencils and paper away, then tucking her back in. “I tell you what, you're better than any teacher I ever had.”

She smiled at him, and from this angle he could see the tip of a new tooth breaking her gum. He bent to kiss her forehead again.

“Good night, Batman.”

“Robin!”

CHAPTER 22

I
T WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, BUT
A
NGUS
WAS LYING
with his hands behind his head and his eyes wide open. The light of the full moon strained through the thin bedroom curtains. Hazel was sound asleep and still beside him, curled as she always was, away from him on her right side.

He got up, put on his trousers and a pullover, and went downstairs. He went to the window and looked out at the barn. Unable to help himself, Angus slipped on his boots and wandered down the dirty path, rubbing his arms against the chill of the night. The moon was bright and lit his way.

At the barn, he stepped inside Maisie's pen. It had been scrubbed clean and stank of disinfectant. There was no straw covering the floor on which she had lain, no grain in her feeding trough, no water in her bucket.

Angus placed his cupped hand over his eyes and began to cry. He wept with abandon, spit stretching from his mouth to the floor and his shoulders heaving. After a few moments, he had to lean against the wall to catch his breath. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweater, and whispered small prayers of apology and forgiveness, moving his lips without sound.

Finally, he turned toward the door and stood staring up at the night sky. The loss filled him, as the spirit of God filled a believer. Being filled with loss was like being full of darkness and Angus had never felt so empty. In the midst of his grief, nothing seemed to matter anymore: he had no interest in prayer or worship, no motivation to guide his wife and his children, no interest in the farm.

The only thing that still inspired and motivated Angus was his quest to find out the truth about the criminal who had taken Molly Henderson. Now, standing in the moonlight, his tears chilling on his cheeks, Angus chewed the inside of his mouth, twisting his lips one way and then the other, as he contemplated that, in a few hours' time, Kathleen would read his article. He had reported his findings about George to the superintendent in charge of the Molly Henderson investigation while he was writing the article.

Detective Inspector Black had not realized the great importance of the information Angus had given him. He had merely muttered, “We'll look into it,” when told about George McLaughlin. Angus remembered that the Yorkshire Ripper had been questioned several times before he was finally caught, and Angus saw Black's lack of interest as another example of police incompetence.

It was now six days since Molly had been taken, but her body had not yet been discovered. Angus hoped that his article would be picked up by the national press and the police would confirm that George was wanted for questioning.

The similarity of Molly's abduction to those of the murdered children meant that Highlands and Islands police were coordinating with police teams nationwide working on the other open cases. Black had taken note of Angus's informa
tion about George, but it seemed as if the team's attention was focused on the danger that Molly's abductor was a serial child murderer.

Angus was certain that there was a way to track George McLaughlin down and prove that
he
had taken the Henderson child. He was bitter that the police could not see the light. Blinking in the moonlight, Angus imagined the heat of flashbulbs, as he was interviewed by an audience of the national press, all asking how he had solved one of the most pressing cases of child abduction in recent years.

Angus knew that he was different from the other writers. He was an
investigative journalist
and as such he was committed to discovering the truth. He would stop at nothing until he found it.

He remembered Tam at the McLaughlin garage and the way he had laughed when Angus asked where George was: “
That
is the magic question,” Tam had said. Whatever the police or the other newspapers thought, Angus felt that Tam was right. Finding George was the key to finding Molly, dead or alive.

A
t eight o'clock, as soon as he had finished his porridge, Angus called Betsy Clarke at home. He was now full of passion and energy and ready to act.

“Good morning, Angus. Are you well?”

“Very well, and yourself?”

“Grand. Just about to go to work . . .”

“I don't want to hold you back. It was just about those three names you gave me last time.” Angus consulted his notebook, pressing the point of the pen underneath each name as he spoke, “Tait, McGowan, and Tanner.”

“The girls that witnessed . . .”

“That's right. You don't happen to have their addresses? I wanted to talk to their parents—see if anything's been missed.”

“Well, not on me, but you can look them up. Sandra's father works in the post office in town, Pamela's mother runs the café-gallery on Main Street, and Sheila lives next door to Gordon and Jeanette, who cover the Sunday school when David is unavailable.”

“Perfect,” said Angus, making careful notes. “That's enough to go on. I'm sure I'll find them, no problem.”

“You will. I'll have to dash now.”

“You've been a great help once again, Betsy. You're in my prayers.”

“And you mine. You heard, of course, about the other witnesses?” Angus swallowed and hunched over the telephone, as if someone was listening to him. “Others?” he whispered.

“My next-door neighbors—you might not know them—an old couple, the Stirlings. They're heathens but they've paid the price for it; a hard life, lost a child to leukemia, poor souls. You might know Sue, of course, she was the one . . .”

Angus pressed his teeth together in irritation. The minutiae that women thought relevant or even interesting made his soul white hot with rage. It was all he could do not to scream at Betsy to
shut up
and tell him
what they saw
.

He took a deep breath and interrupted as politely as he could. “I think I know who you mean. What did they see? Do the police know?”

“Oh, yes. I was talking to Sue just yesterday. They were in the police station for some hours the other day. After all the newspaper articles, they decided to come forward—thought that what they had seen might be relevant . . .”

“And what did they see?”

“A little girl that matched Molly's description being dragged screaming into a car near Sir George's Park.”

“My goodness,” said Angus, almost to himself.

“Anyway, I really must dash. I did like your prayer of repentance on Sunday. You can tell you're a writer, because you do have a way with words.”

Angus blushed at the compliment, and hung up the phone, his mouth twisted into a sneer.
When the Lord closes a door, somehow He opens a window
.

T
he Stirlings were retired and Angus had thought they would be at home so early in the morning, but no one answered when he pressed the doorbell. He peered through the letterbox and saw that there was no buildup of mail on the doormat to suggest they were away on holiday. He went around the back of the property. There was no letterbox on the kitchen door, but there was a cat flap, so Angus got down on his knees on the step and pushed his nose inside. He picked up a distinct smell of toast in the kitchen.

“Can we help you?”

Angus heard himself being addressed by a very properly spoken man and scrambled to his feet. Mr. Stirling and his wife, Sue, were standing arm in arm, frowning at him. Mr. Stirling was a tall man, so Angus chose to stay on their doorstep as he threw out his hands in welcome and gave them a large smile.

“Hello. What a surprise. I'm so glad you came back. My name's Angus, Angus Campbell, from the
John O'Groat Journal
. I was very keen to speak to you.”

“So I can see,” said Mr. Stirling, watching Angus's outstretched hand wavering in the space between them before he finally took it.

Angus tried to compensate for his behavior by giving Mr. Stirling's hand a manly squeeze, but found that the older man tugged his hand away.

“What is it you want to speak to us about?” said Sue. She was a thin-boned woman wearing bright lipstick.

Angus made sure his smile remained in place as he addressed her. “Forgive me for the interruption, but I'm working on the Molly Henderson story—I met with Kathleen, bless her, just a week ago. I heard that you had information.”

The couple looked at each other. “We spoke to the police. We're not sure if what we told them is relevant,” said Mr. Stirling.

“When a young girl goes missing, every detail is important,” said Angus.

“You'd best come in then,” said Sue, as her husband took the house keys out of his pocket.

Mr. Stirling stood pointing the key at Angus, as if it were a knife of some sort. “You'll need to move away from the door so that I can open it,” he said, and Angus detected a note of irritation in his voice.

As he was bid, Angus climbed down from their doorstep and waited for the door to be opened.

T
he Stirlings' home was traditionally furnished and cluttered. There was an old globe on its axis, a collection of blown glass animals, several bookcases with glass fronts, and a considerable stack of records beside an old turntable. Two crystal decanters were filled with what Angus presumed to be whiskey and sherry. He turned down his lips in distaste as he waited for Mr. Stirling to return from the bathroom and Sue to bring the tea she had offered.

When they were settled, Angus took out his pad and pen. “I am working on the bigger story. What you tell me won't be printed any time soon and possibly not at all, but I am working on finding who has taken Molly and what you tell me may well be useful in tracing her abductor. Ultimately, I am hoping to write a good news story when she is found. Although some others believe she is already dead, I am hopeful that she is still alive.”

“Oh, we hope so too,” said Sue, placing a plate of buttered scones on a small table in front of Angus.

“So, if you could tell me what you saw?”

Mr. Stirling cleared his throat and looked at his wife, as if to ask for her permission to proceed. Angus opened his eyes wide in anticipation.

“It was only after reading the article in the
Journal
. . . your interview with Kathleen Henderson, in fact, that the two of us thought again about the incident and then we reported it. It may be that it is still of no consequence . . . However, we were on our morning walk—our usual route by the park—and we saw a car stop at the pelican crossing. A young girl jumped out, possibly not as young as seven . . . to me she looked older—nine or ten years old—but she did have long hair like Molly . . .”

“Did you notice an eye patch?” asked Angus.

“No, neither of us did,” interjected Sue, lifting her tea, which rattled on the saucer. “But that doesn't necessarily mean she didn't have one. At the time neither of us thought any of this was untoward.”

“However, after the young girl jumped out of the car, she started to run,” continued Mr. Stirling, “and a tall man got out and gave chase. He was very tall, I would say a good few inches taller than me, and I am hardly short . . .”

Angus twitched at the mention of height, but nodded.

“He was heavy too,” said Mr. Stirling, “not fat at all, but large built, and it seemed that the run was taxing for him, and he was wearing a suit and so he caught your eye so to speak—a man of his size in a suit, running at full pelt. He caught up with the girl and took her by the arm and began to pull her back to the car. As we approached, we saw that the girl was crying and shouting, but we assumed it was his daughter . . .”

“Yes, some sort of tantrum,” said Sue, sipping her tea. “And they could have been father and daughter, not that we looked closely, but they both had dark hair. He smiled at us, though. He seemed . . . nice.”

Angus had brought with him a copy of the photograph of George and his family on the steps of the High Court in Glasgow. He slipped it from the back of his pad and passed it to the couple. “Do you know if this was the man you saw?”

Mr. Stirling sighed, one hand over his mouth. “In truth it could have been any of the men in this photo. Do you agree, Sue?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “We didn't get a good enough look at his face, but the car . . .”

“Oh, yes, we told the police . . .”

“You got a number plate?” said Angus, feeling a flutter of preemptive joy.

“No, but the car was definitely dark red, and it was an Allegro. I only remember because we used to have one. And when they drove off we noticed there was a bumper sticker on the car that said G
LASGOW'S MILES BETTER
.”

Angus felt a flush of vindication. It
was
George McLaughlin; he knew it in his bones.

“And where were they headed?”

“They were headed out of town, on the A9.”

A
ngus returned to the office, where he made notes on the McLaughlin case and called Inspector Black, who said that there were no new leads at this time.

“I'm aware of what the Stirlings said about the Glasgow sticker, but that means nothing. We can hardly arrest everyone in Glasgow, I'm sure you'll agree, Angus,” said the detective.

“But you
still
haven't managed to question George McLaughlin?”

“We haven't managed to locate him, but he is not an actual suspect at this time.”

“The Stirlings' description matches George . . .”

“Yet they failed to identify him. I thank you for your efforts, but I have nothing more for you at this time.”

T
hat afternoon, Angus wrote two articles: one on the Thurso autumn fair and another on the Caithness boat race, and then, at three o'clock, he got into his car and drove to Sheila Tanner's home, a council house with a well-kept front lawn.

He waited outside for the child to return from school—hoping to catch both her and a parent on the doorstep and persuade them to give him a few moments. If he had no success with Sheila, he was planning to go to the post office to speak to Sandra's father and then to the café to speak to Pamela's mother.