North Sea Requiem (31 page)

It had taken hours of patient cajoling, but the boy now let Mae touch him. In this space, which he seemed familiar with, he leaned into her as they lay on the tarpaulin and blankets that the madwoman, as Mae called her, had thrown in after them. Then she and her husband—
Equally mad!
Mae had shouted at him—had padlocked the door before moving the cupboard back.

Mae was now seriously worried. Joanne had been unconscious for far too long. She bathed her friend's head from the pail of drinking water. The bleeding had stopped, but even in the impenetrable black, she knew Joanne's injury was bad. Perhaps, without help, fatal.

When the door was once more unlocked—in the morning, Mae thought, as she had lost track of time—she shouted, “Get Joanne out of here. She'll die if she doesn't get help.”

Moira Forbes whispered, “Shoosh. I told you, any sound an' I'll kill you.”

Mae could feel the child tremble. She hugged him and forced herself to slow her breathing.

Moira laid a tray with a cake tin of porridge and three spoons and a bottle of milk on the floor at Joanne's feet.

“Now that Joanne is missing, they will come here looking for her,” Mae said.
Keep calm. Always sound bored,
she told herself,
for the boy's sake show no fear
.

“Maybe, but if they do, I'll throw the acid, and I don't care which one of you it catches.”

“Moira,” Mae Bell deliberately used her name, “with Nurse Urquhart, I'm sure it was an accident. If Joanne dies, it will be
murder. Please call the ambulance, a doctor, someone. Please”—she was pleading, but she couldn't help it—“I'll leave, I'll never bother you again . . . please get help for Joanne.”

“And have them steal my boy? Never.” Moira stepped back, holding out the small, flat blue bottle as though warding off evil.

With the final sound of the door shutting, then the padlocks, Mae had to dig her overlong fingernails into her palms, almost breaking the skin to stop herself shuddering. And crying. The sound felt like the final closing of a coffin lid.

“Eat,” the boy said. So they did. And still Joanne had not stirred.

I
will interview Mr. Forbes again, and if I find good cause, I will get a search warrant, but so far, there's not enough evidence for one,” DI Dunne repeated for the third time.

“It's a day and a half—nearly two nights. Joanne would never abandon her children.” McAllister was pacing in the narrow gap between table and wall, pulling at his hair, thumping the table, reaching the other end in a few paces, glowering at DI Dunne, who stood, coat on, hat in his hands, immobile, immovable. “Mal Forbes had the opportunity to steal the acid from the
Gazette
. He could easily have left the anonymous letters, he and Joanne are on bad terms . . .”

“Excuse me, Mr. McAllister . . .” It was Mal Forbes. “I couldn't help overhearing . . .”

“The whole town probably overheard.” This came from Don, who was sitting at the far end of the reporters' table watching the exchange.

“It's not that I don't get on with Mrs. Ross, we just see things differently.” Fortunately for Mal Forbes, he was standing on the other side of the table from McAllister; even with his long arms, the editor couldn't reach him.

“Where is she?” His voice as harsh as a raven's. “What have you done with her?” This time pleading, his voice lowing like a bull at the slaughterhouse gate.

“I'm sorry, Mr. McAllister, I haven't done anything to Mrs. Ross.”

Don thought from the way Mal Forbes spoke and the way he held his head—the brilliantined hair, the gleam of his false teeth, the unconscious way he tugged at his equally gleaming shirt cuffs with regimental cuff links—he might be telling the truth.
But he's a salesman,
Don thought,
deceit comes naturally.

“You're from Elgin.” McAllister was clutching at the proverbial straw, knowing there was nothing to connect Mal Forbes to Joanne's disappearance, to Nurse Urquhart, nothing.

“I don't see what that has to do with anything.” Mal Forbes cocked his head to one side—the embodiment of puzzlement.

He
is
hiding something,
Don decided, watching Mal's every move, every blink, catching a twitch in the left corner of the man's mouth.

“Mr. Forbes,” DI Dunne intervened, “would you mind coming to the police station and making a statement?” It was not a request. He needed to separate the two men.

“Not at all.” Mal went down the stairs with not a word more.

The inspector was buttoning his coat. The wind was still fierce. “McAllister, I'll keep in touch, but as I said, you're best off at home. Maybe Mrs. Ross will come back there, or call you, or . . . Good morning, gentlemen.”

The inspector, now he's definitely lying,
Don thought.

“What do we do?” McAllister slumped onto a chair, elbows on the table, head in hands.

“Is someone at your house in case Joanne turns up there?”

“Mrs. Ross Senior. She's there until I get back.”

Granny and Granddad Ross had the girls staying at their house but had made them go to school.

“No one will harm the bairns now they have Joanne,” Granny Ross told her husband. “So no sense in worrying them by doing things different.” She was convinced Joanne had been kidnapped. Why, she couldn't say. Worse she forced herself not to think about.

That morning, after leaving the girls at the school gates, Granny Ross continued on her bicycle to McAllister's house. With only a
Good morning, Mr. McAllister,
she went straight to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and started to cook breakfast. She knew there was no news. He'd have said if there was.

Whilst he was eating, she started on the dishes. When he'd finished, she said, “Go to work, you're worse than useless here. I'll mind the phone. Dad is staying home in case she rings there.” She was in her usual flowery housewives' cover-all apron, her hat she kept on, held to her scalp with the usual array of lethal hairpins. She spoke matter-of-factly—keeping busy was her solution to all dramas.

As he was making for the front door and work, she asked, “Where do you keep the hoover?”

He wanted to rush over to her and hug her but knew he might break down; the ordinariness of Joanne's mother-in-law's words concealed her emotions—and he had no doubts they were legion. And he knew that when he came home, his house would be scrubbed from top to bottom and the front step and the brass doorknob and knocker gleaming.

“McAllister, we have to get a newspaper out,” Don had told him when he arrived at work. As with Mrs. Ross, work was what McAllister needs, Don thought,
else the wait will break him.

They took the layout Fiona had prepared, both too tense to notice how professional it was.

Hector came in. He said little; Fiona had told him there was no news. He handed over a larger-than-usual sports section, bigger pictures taking up most of the space. He was guessing, rightly, that without Joanne, and with McAllister in a mess, the
Gazette
would need filling with something, anything.

“I've added an article and a picture of the ladies' hockey team
as well as the usual football reports,” Hector said, giving the photo to Don.

“Thanks, lad.” Don sized it up, filled another page.

“I was wondering how I can help.” Hec looked as miserable as the rest of them.

“Leave it to the police. We're best getting the paper out.”

Hector walked down to reception. He was exhausted. And scared. He'd been out until late in the night, joining in the search party of friends, neighbors, Joanne's brother-in-law, and many of his parishioners.

He knew Bill Ross was helping coordinate the search for the mother of his children. He had taken his van, and with three comrades from his old regiment, volunteered to search the Islands, knowing it was one of Joanne's favorite places to sit and think—something he had never understood.

Hec was hoping against reason that she might have fallen, was hurt,
But please, not fallen into the river
. If she had, he knew well enough there was little chance of her being alive; although not deep, the river was wide and swift, impossible even for a strong swimmer.

He had seen police frogmen preparing to check the canal at Muirton. He knew the harbor had been searched and fishing boats in the firth were asked to keep a lookout. He knew the army would be called in next to search the outlying woods and hills and other likely places. He knew that meant they were searching for a body.

Hec also well knew that the town and countryside and glens and hills were easy places to lose a body; a swift-flowing river, deep, dark lochs and empty moorland, woods and wells and quarries all within easy reach of the town. And in the town itself, there were many places a person, or a body, could disappear.

“Still no word?” he asked Fiona.

“Nothing.” She was as scared as him and knew that publishing the newspaper was essential. “I wonder if the
Gazette
will run an appeal for information . . .”

“That's two days off—they have to find her before then.” Hec leaned over and took her hand.

She let him, even though she had vowed to never show affection in public. “Hector, I've never been this scared in my whole life.”

“Me neither.”

Upstairs, Don was thinking the same thing; he didn't voice the thought in front of the others, but he was mentally preparing a front page appealing for information on Joanne's disappearance. He daren't contemplate worse.

Rob came in. “Here, some copy for page five, and the article on the town dogs worrying the sheep at the Leachkin farms.” He didn't take off his jacket. He was dangling an old aviator's leather hat with sheepskin-lined earmuffs in one hand and the bike keys in the other. “Elgin,” he said. “Joanne was convinced Mae's search for information about her husband was the cause of all”—he gestured to thin air—“all this. So, Elgin, or the air force base at Kinloss, is where it started. I'm thinking of driving there.”

McAllister said, “I don't see how that will help find her.”

“I'll be back tonight, and it's better than doing nothing.”

They all understood, and McAllister envied Rob his freedom to escape, to drive fast, to burn up the frustrations on his red motorbike.

“Aye. But drive carefully. We need you.” He coughed, looked away, knowing Joanne's disappearance meant almost as much to Rob—and Don—as to him.

He told Rob, “When we were in Elgin searching for information on Mae and Robert Bell, Joanne said the woman in the tea shop, who turned out to be Mal Forbes's cousin . . .” He got up,
tried to shut the door, but as it had been open for a century, it wouldn't move. He went into his office. Rob followed. Then Don, who shut the editor's door.

“Joanne thought the woman in the tea shop was hiding something about the Forbes family. I also got the feeling the editor of the newspaper knew something but didn't want to gossip.”

“First time I've heard of a journalist who doesn't gossip,” Don said.

“I could go and see him,” Rob offered.

“No, you're too young. I'll give him a call—one old journalist to another. But you talk to the women, that you can do right well, so . . .” Don looked at the clock, looked at Rob.

“I'm off,” Rob said. “The tearoom in the town square, you said?”

McAllister only nodded. He was lighting a new cigarette from the previous one, his mouth felt foul and his bones were hurting and his eyes were gritty and his brain had all but seized up.

“Don't drive too fast, it's no' worth it.” Don patted his reporter on the back “We don't need to . . .”
lose another reporter
he was about to say, and caught himself just in time.

When they were alone, McAllister, needing to fill in the silence, started, “I used to think that when you love someone and you were parted, you'd know if they were alive or dead,” speaking to himself more than to Don. “But I don't believe that anymore. I have no idea where she is, or why she's missing. I'm terrified.”

Don knew that terror better than anyone at the
Gazette
. “She's not dead yet. Until you know, you should always hope.” Don's voice, his words, were firm. And he didn't believe a word of it. “Back to work, McAllister.”

This was the day for McAllister to compose the editorial. Don decided to pass the task on to Mortimer Beauchamp
Carlyle, chairman of the
Gazette
board and sometime correspondent on matters rural, who could be relied on to conjure up the right tone, the right topic for such times. When it arrived, the editorial was on spring in the glens, and the moors and the farms and foreshores, an innocuous piece on the rhythm of life. More a poem, it was beautiful and right and full of hope; no one wanted to anticipate the worst.