North Sea Requiem (19 page)

M
ae Bell did not turn up until the day after the fire. She went straight to her hotel, not looking up to the second floor, so did not notice any change on the outside. She certainly noticed a change in the reception.

“You're back,” the owner, Mrs. Hardie, said.

“I am.” Mae smiled, knowing any small kindness would not work; the owner had disapproved of her from the instant she saw Mae Bell, but she needed the custom. “My key?”

“Oh, it's a key you're wanting. That's fine then. A key. But don't be expecting a bed. There is none. And we need to have a wee talk about the damage you caused. Beds are not cheap, you know.”

Mae Bell had had enough of the woman.

“Explain,” was all she said.

“Your room was attacked with acid. The mattress was burnt beyond saving and your stuff was ruined by the firemen.”

“Glad I wasn't there,” Mae said.

She sat down on the sofa that was even harder than the train seats, crossed her legs, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke at the No Smoking sign, glad to see Mrs. Hardie looking as though she would combust at any minute.

Smoking with harder, longer draws, the tobacco calmed her. Her normally pale skin had now a corpselike grey tinge. Her eyes, although carefully made up, were betraying her age. She
uncrossed her legs, not wanting to give Mrs. Hardie the satisfaction of seeing the tremble in her knees. All she could think was,
I need a drink
.

“As I said, your things are beyond rescue, and we need to settle the bill for the damage . . .”

“Always take all I need with me.” Mae pointed to the substantial suitcase the porter had taken from the taxi. “Never know when you might need a ball gown, don't you agree?” She waggled her head in perfect imitation of an Indian sage. “As for the compensation for the damage to my
things,
it's very kind of you but I can't accept
damages
.” She knew full well that was not Mrs. Hardie's meaning. Mae Bell had endured much worse when she married Robert; the disapproval of a Highland landlady was not anywhere in the same league.

The porter cum doorman cum factotum coughed and said in a sweet deep Scottish Louis Armstrong growl, “The police said for you to call the minute you showed up.”

He liked Mae Bell and thought the news should have been broken gently. It was a vicious attack, no getting away from that. “Maybe your friend Mrs. Ross can explain more.”

Mrs. Hardie was standing with her ample arms crossed, furious that her moment of revenge hadn't materialized.

“I'll keep your bag for you,” said the porter, who was Mr. Hardie but always known—even by his wife—as
the porter
. “You go and see your friends.” He took her elbow and led her out the door.

When Mae Bell left he turned to his wife, saying, “Where's your Christian charity?” There was no reply; he hadn't expected one.

Mae went as far as Gino's café only fifty yards down the street. She took a seat near the counter, keeping the cheerful Gino in sight.

“Espresso?”

“Do you have anything stronger?”

“Sì.”
He saw what he recognized as shell shock, a word his son-in-law had taught him. He poured grappa into the coffee and prepared a second cup just in case. He took it to Mae. She downed it in one. The second cup was indeed needed. She took her time over that one.

Gino phoned Joanne. It took four minutes for Joanne to come over, McAllister with her. Gino served the same drink to McAllister, but a cappuccino for Joanne. Then he served the same grappa-charged coffee for himself.

McAllister explained to Mae Bell what had happened. She chain-smoked three cigarettes after she understood exactly what was meant to have happened, calming down only after Joanne told her her opinion.

“It was a warning, Mae.” Joanne chose to believe that. McAllister disagreed but didn't say so. Mae was on McAllister's side.

DI Dunne arrived. Tea for him; he regarded coffee as an abomination. “Mrs. Hardie at the hotel called to say you were here.”

“I bet she did.” Mae laughed through the smoke, her voice as smoky as ever, but now with an edge.

She could be fierce if she needed to,
Joanne thought.

“You were saying, Mr. McAllister?” DI Dunne asked.

“I was saying that I don't feel the attack was meant on Mae personally, only as a warning—as with the letters—only more graphic.” McAllister decided to go along with Joanne's more optimistic view of the attack.

“Reassuring.” Mae stubbed out a cigarette.

“I agree with Mr. McAllister.” DI Dunne sipped his tea, surprised it was real Scottish tea, having suspected they did not do tea in Italy. “The question remains, why you? What have you done to invoke such anger?”

“And how does this connect with Nurse Urquhart?” Joanne asked.

“Would you please excuse me?” Mae rose and made for the ladies' room, quickly. She was there some time.

When she came back, Joanne asked, “Are you all right?”

“I'm tired,” Mae said. She was looking as glamorous as ever, but the fresh lipstick, the eye makeup added, not quite hiding the redness of the rims, gave Joanne the true answer. “I need to rest,” Mae said. She needed to think. “First a long train journey, then this.”

“Ah, there might be a wee problem—Mrs. Hardie is not keen . . .” DI Dunne shifted from one buttock to the other.

“Inspector, she was never keen, as you put it. Loathed me on sight, but not my money.”

“You must stay at my house,” McAllister said. “There's a spare key under the doormat. We can call a taxi from the hotel.”

“I can find another hotel,” Mae Bell said. But she meant differently. The shelter of a real home with good people after weeks in hotels, after strange discomforting news, after an attack she knew was meant to maim her, perhaps worse, made the offer hard to turn down. “And I have to talk with the police,” she added.

“You're staying with us,” McAllister said. “I'm sure the inspector can wait till later.” It was not a suggestion, and the inspector only nodded. He had heard the “us,” a confirmation of the rumors he'd heard. He did not disapprove. Nor approve. But years as a policeman had taught him to suspend moral judgments.

“Later today,” DI Dunne said, “I'll call round to Mr. McAllister's house. You can give me a statement then.” Neither was this a suggestion. Nurse Urquhart had died from an acid attack, so the case was manslaughter, a particularly nasty manslaughter that, in Inspector Dunne's opinion, was murder. He had no leads.
This latest incident gave him hope of solving the case. Less than twenty-four hours later he was as confused as ever.

•   •   •

It took Rob to scare Joanne with what should have been obvious.

“Mae Bell at McAllister's house? Aren't you scared whoever's after her will try to attack her there?” he asked when the editor explained what had happened.

Rob hadn't meant to scare anyone and didn't know Joanne and her girls stayed at McAllister's regularly. He saw the attack at Mae Bell's hotel as a warning and only half believed the attacker would strike again. “Anyhow, I don't suppose anyone will know Mae is at your place,” he added.

“There's no way anyone can find out,” McAllister said, more confidently than he believed.
Everyone knows everything in this town.

“What did Mrs. Bell say about the attack?” Don asked.

“Not much. She wasn't feeling well,” Joanne told him.

“Two reporters—in the same room as the would-be victim—and you didn't ask?” Don asked McAllister—only half joking. “Young Robert. Jump on thon red chariot o' yours and get round to McAllister's and interview Mrs. Bell. I want a story with suitable quotes in . . .” He looked up at the eye of a clock. “In two hours—subbed and retyped—two and a half hours. Now, what's next?”

He knew what was next—choosing which of Hec's seventeen pictures of gamboling lambs to use in “Spring Is Here,” a maudlin pre-Easter story to placate the traditional readers of the
Gazette
.

The worry of an attack stayed with Joanne. That night, she was at home, enjoying her own house with her own books and her own night noises, not missing the company, knowing McAllister and Mae Bell would be prattling on about Paris and music and life in the city now that the war and occupation was a memory. “A bitter memory,” Mae told him, “but you know . . . it's still Paris.”

•   •   •

The lilac was early. The scent had greeted Joanne as she pushed open the garden gate. The girls were already home. Annie had a key and although Joanne didn't like it, she had no choice but to allow them to come home to an empty house.
They're nine and eleven now,
she reminded herself, often.

“Hiya, Mum. Look, Snowy is happy we're back. And I think Mrs. Murdoch”—this was the next-door neighbor—“she's been feeding her too much, she's right fat.”

Jean gave the cat to Joanne. She was examining it and discovering fat was not the problem when she saw the envelope on the table.

“Where did that come from?” she asked Annie, trying to keep her voice steady.

“It was on the doormat.” Annie took the cat from her mum and she too was examining it. “It's no' fat, silly, it's kittens.”

“Really? Really and truly?” For once Jean wasn't offended at her sister's calling her silly. “Mum, Mum, we're going to have kittens.”

Joanne didn't answer until Annie dumped the cat back on her lap. She automatically rubbed her hand over the cat's belly. She could feel the little wriggling creatures inside. “So she is,” she said.

“Who's the letter from?” Annie asked.

“Ask no questions, tell no lies.” Joanne tried to make nothing of it. “It's only something to do with work.” She forced her voice to a bright, cheery, joking tone, trying to keep everything normal.

Annie didn't believe her. She knew of the divorce and was convinced that was what the letter was about. It wasn't. The contents of the letter were beyond even her imagination.

YOU ARE NEXT.

Joanne wanted to grab her girls and run. Run all across town to McAllister.
No. I need to show him I can look after myself.

She was wishing she could afford a phone. Wishing the wind would stop shaking the huge oak, throwing shadows across the curtains so it felt like Halloween, not springtime.

Never before, alone with her children, had she felt this nervous about the unknown. Now every crack and groan and shudder the wind whipped up scared her.

When the yowls started at twenty to four in the morning, for a few seconds she was so terrified she froze. Then she recognized the noise.

“I'm coming, wee Snowy, I'm coming.”

•   •   •

Across town the wind was no less, but the house was built to contain weather. It was late and McAllister and Mae were reminiscing.

“Springtime in Paris,” she said smiling; a cigarette in a long holder in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, sitting sideways in the chair, her legs tucked in in an elegant swanlike pose. “It's time I got back there, spring is almost over.”

“In Paris, not here,” McAllister pointed out. April in the Highlands, and May, were spring to him. “You'll go back to Paris even though you didn't find what you came for?”

“It's my home. I'm the proverbial American in Paris.” Again he thrilled to hear her laugh, a sound coming from deep within her singer's diaphragm. “And I've walked where Robert walked, I saw the sea, the river, the sand dunes at Findhorn, his favorite place—high and empty, and when the wind blows it whips up the sand, stinging your face and hands. I found sand in my bed the next morning. It took two washings to get it out of my hair.”

She took a sip of wine. Needing it.

“ ‘It's cold,' he wrote, ‘really cold, and wild, but beautiful.' And it is.” She shivered. “I took my shoes off, put my feet in the sea. Boy, it was icy—in ten seconds my feet were blue . . .” She took
another sip of wine to warm her. “Robert, he hated the cold. Hated it.”

McAllister topped up her glass before adding another log to the fire and putting on some music. Not jazz, this time Bach, an elegy for Robert, a man he would never know but was sure he would like.

“I met people who didn't know him but remembered the American airmen as fun.” Mae needed to keep talking. McAllister was happy to be her audience.

“ ‘Right polite,' the lady in the pub said.” Mae almost had the accent. “I read the newspaper stories, I saw the fatal accident report, I talked to some of the people on the base who were around at the time, and the local policemen. They all said the same. It was an accident. Bird strike was the theory. No sign of the aircraft, nor of Robert and the pilot and crew, so,” Mae finished, “nothing new. No more information. But I've seen what Robert saw, and it is beautiful.” She was almost telling the truth. But not the whole truth.