North Sea Requiem (20 page)

McAllister had had one glass too many to notice.

T
he next morning when Joanne was about to drag herself up the stairs to work, she met Rob in reception talking to Fiona.

“You look terrible.”

She started weeping.

He was appalled. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I was only joking . . .”

“I didn't get much sleep. The cat had seven kittens and . . .” She held up her hands and shoulders in the universal gesture of helplessness. “What am I going to do with seven kittens?”

“Let's get out of here.”

They met McAllister on the steps outside the office. He too looked as though he hadn't had much sleep.

“We'll be back in half an hour,” Rob told him, shielding Joanne from the editor, in case it was her love-life that was upsetting her.

“What's happened?” McAllister shouted after them, but they were halfway down the Wynd and didn't hear.

“What happened?” he asked Fiona.

“Mrs. Ross's cat had seven kittens,” she explained.

•   •   •

When the waitress left the coffees on the table—the one in the far corner, half hidden by the jukebox—Rob said, “What's really wrong?”

“I had a letter.”

He knew instantly what kind of letter. “What did it say?”

She handed it over. “This is the second. I didn't tell anyone about the first one—it came to the
Gazette.
This one was delivered to my house. Annie found it. They know where I live . . .” She was no longer crying, but her hand was unsteady as she lifted the cup.

“This is horrible.” He did not question her fear. Did not try to reassure her.
She's right to be scared
. “These letters are getting more frequent.”
And attacks,
he had the sense not to add.

“Thanks a bunch, Rob.” She gave him a half-smile. She needed Rob to go straight for the jugular.

“That's when people make mistakes.”

“Really?”

“I've no idea, but isn't that what detectives say?”

She laughed even though she was terrified. She asked him, all in a rush,
What am I going to do? Will my girls be safe? Why is someone after me? Would your mother take a kitten?

Then he was the one laughing. “My mother? Take a kitten? Only if you abandon one in the garage so she has no choice. Tell you what, I'll put on a disguise, stand outside a school, and give kittens to little girls. They take them home, and the mothers have no choice but to keep them.”

“I was thinking of an ad in the paper, but your solution would work better.” She smiled at him. He smiled back. They were close to deadline, so they left, walking back arm in arm.

Disguise,
she was thinking.
I wonder
. She didn't have time to discuss it with Rob, and after that she forgot. Handing the letter—the warning—over to McAllister and seeing his face take on the look of the Grim Reaper, fear returned.

“I've bloody had enough of this.” He was shouting.

Don picked up the note, dropped it. “Cowardly, nasty, revolting . . .”

“So what are you going to do?” Hector asked. He didn't
say “we” because he still believed it was partly his fault for taking the pictures of the leg in the shinty boot.

Rob heard him. “It all started with the bloody foot.”

Once again, they were stuck. No connections, no ideas, nothing.

Joanne was remembering that the foot and Mae Bell's appearance in town happened in the same week. “No, they didn't,” she said suddenly, not realizing she had spoken aloud.

“What?” McAllister asked.

“Hold on, I need back copies of the paper. No. Dates. Don, help me. What date was the foot found? Right. The ad went in . . . right. Found it.”

For once she was grateful that recent copies of the
Gazette
were sitting in a big pile in the corner, waiting to be filed. She put the newspapers on the desk and turned to Lost and Found. Next she opened the week before's newspaper.

“No. Not there,” she muttered. Then, “This is it.” She looked up at four pairs of eyes watching her with varying degrees of puzzlement—or rather three, because Hector was permanently puzzled.

“The first ad appeared in the
Gazette
two weeks before the foot was found: ‘Seeking friends and colleagues of the late Robert John Bell, USAF, based at RAF Kinloss 1951 to 1952.' ”

“So what does that tell us?” McAllister asked.

“I don't know.” The adrenaline flooded out of her. She sat down. She looked at the ads again. “I don't know.” The timing bothered Joanne like an ever-so-slightly-off-key note from a single singer in a choir—not obvious to everyone, but discordant all the same.

“I don't know either.” McAllister was considering her idea. “But however tenuous, it's the only link we can find.”

With a wink at Joanne and a nod to McAllister, Don said, “Good luck telling your not-at-all-clear theory to DI Dunne.”

“McAllister, fancy a trip to Elgin after we get the edition out?” Joanne asked.

“A picnic? An Easter outing? A roll in the sand dunes?” He couldn't resist teasing her; he loved the way her cheeks flushed, her eyes brightened.

“Behave. You're too old to roll in sand dunes. No, just a wee journey . . .” She had thought of taking the girls, but this needed to happen on a weekday.

“Who's too old for sand dunes?” He reached over and brushed her hair aside for her.

“McAllister. Behave. No, I'm thinking this investigation needs a visit to Elgin—to the local newspaper, the library, the local registry office. We need to find out more about Robert Bell. Find out more about his life at RAF Kinloss before the accident.”

Don was enjoying the skirmishes between Joanne and the editor. He smiled and said, “I'm sure DI Dunne will have checked. And Mrs. Bell. But there's nothing like the personal touch, one newspaper person to another. I'll call the editor at the
Northern Scot
.” Don remembered Mal Forbes. “Mal Forbes worked there. He was there at the time of the accident.”

“You can ask him,” Joanne suggested. Lately she had begun to appreciate Mal Forbes. Possibly because he was seldom in the office but mostly because she saw how smoothly the advertising side of the
Gazette
was running. She had once tried to run the advertising department along with Betsy Buchanan. Never again, was her attitude about that side of the newspaper.

“Let's go at the end of the week. Early. We should be back by late afternoon. I'll make a picnic.”

“A picnic, then a roll in the dunes.” Don looked at both of them, nodded, and smiled a benediction.

She leaned across the table and tried to swat at his precious wee red pencil.

“No smutty talk in front of the juniors. McAllister and I are going to try to find a connection between Robert Bell and Nurse Urquhart.” Joanne loved it when Don teased her. Don McLeod, a man who should have been a father, a grandfather, but never was.

“Aye”—Don winked—“that too.”

•   •   •

Joanne found Mae's presence in McAllister's house comforting. Rob had given her one of his looks, the one that said,
R
eally? Are you sure?
when she told him.

She thought about the question, examined her feelings, and was certain.

“She livens the place up,” she said.

“Good, it needs it,” Rob replied.

He took to dropping in after work to have a glass of wine with them. Sometimes he brought his guitar. He and Mae sang. Not jazz. She said she needed a piano for that. They sang all the silly love songs and pop songs and war songs. Joanne joined in her voice clear and true and Scottish. Once, only once, after at least half a bottle of a decent burgundy, McAllister joined them on comb and tissue paper in an extended version of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird,” which Joanne was certain would have the neighbors knocking at the door it was so late.

Mae Bell being there meant Joanne could stay the night when the girls were at their father's or grandparents'. Not with McAllister. But in the single bed in one of the three guest rooms—the one originally meant for the maid, on the attic floor. From up there, on clear mornings, she could look northwards to the ridge above town, the dark pine woods on either side framing the dairy farms that
supplied much of the town with milk so rich that she kept the four inches of cream at the top of the bottles for her apple pies. McAllister once remarked that her apple pie was so delicious he would have to marry her, until he saw his mistake and again backed off.

•   •   •

Mae Bell was finding living in McAllister's house peaceful. There was enough music to keep her entertained, books by the hundreds—although she was not a reader and would have preferred magazines—but most of all she found the British wireless programs fascinating.

When McAllister was at work she kept the wireless on for company, tuned in to the
Home Service.

“Really? You have a show called the
Home Service
?” she asked when Joanne recommended the channel.

She discovered
Woman's Hour,
a program that relaxed her with the comfortable stories of everyday life. She loved the chapter a day of a novel reading. She found something called
Mrs Dale's Diary,
a short daily show based on the life of a doctor's wife. And the news, and the news analysis and the quizzes, the dialect of Wilfred Pickles with his quiz show,
Have a Go,
and the comedies—though what
The Goon Show
was about she had no idea. Most of all, the reassuring voices of the announcers, the slow, solemn news readers, the posh tones of the British Broadcasting Corporation were a world far removed from hers. The news from Britain and America and Europe about the atomic bomb and the arms race she ignored, not needing any more bad news, and she switched the wireless off every time it was mentioned.

This is another country, another planet, from my life,
she thought. The Highlands were very far from the clubs, the crowding, the harsh life of an orphaned jazz singer. Yes, her father was alive, or so she believed, but she was an orphan. Her life choices had made her so, and she did not regret it for a moment.

Still, she missed her Robert. Still, she talked to him.

“You'd really like this guy McAllister,” she told Robert. “Clever, but not arrogant. He knows his music. He's known hard times. He's funny. You don't need to worry, hon; he's not my type. Besides, he has the love of his life beside him—only she can't see that they are made for each other. Yep, I know, not like us. We knew.”

She'd voice these thoughts as she wandered from sitting room to kitchen, a cup of tea in her hand.
Hey, Robert, would you believe I'm addicted to tea? Sure, I can find coffee, there's this little Italian place—you'd love it.

So the conversations with herself went, all the while the wireless playing, all the while her hurting, thinking, wondering if she had the strength—and the money—to continue her search.

She had planned the confrontation for this week. She thought she now knew enough, and needed her theories confirmed. She was still unsure it was wise. It might even be dangerous. She kept thinking of skin-melting acid. Dying did not scare her; she believed she would join Robert in some great smoky place with good music. Abandoning her mission was not possible, not now that she had read Robert's last letters to her.

“You're quite a guy, aren't you?” she whispered one particularly dark and wet and windy and cold day. “But Robert, you need to help me. I'm really close, but I don't know what to do next.” She lit a cigarette.
If only he'd posted those letters,
she was thinking, she'd have started her search long ago. She let herself cry. Then she turned up the volume and danced a completely inappropriate sexy twisting jiving boogie to Jimmy Shand and his Band playing an eightsome reel.

That's better,
she thought as she collapsed on the armchair trying to catch her breath.
Now it's time to move. But this time, no disguise, no hideous school sports shoes.

She didn't hear McAllister come in. She didn't see him standing in the doorway. She felt his presence, was grateful he didn't interrupt her reverie, only walked to the kitchen, where, she was certain, he would put on the kettle and make a cup of tea.

•   •   •

McAllister and Joanne didn't take their trip to Elgin that week. A notice in the newspaper was the first distraction from their plans.

Don blamed himself for not spotting it. Fiona was distressed because she was the one to set the classified advertisements, the notices, and the court reports. This week, she hadn't run a final check, too distracted by events and by Hector's grin.