North Sea Requiem (38 page)

“Don't be silly.” Annie was furious.

“No, I'm a wee bit sick.” Joanne's voice was soft, but her girls heard.

“We've a new baby brother. His name is William. He's gorgeous.”

Joanne smiled again. “Really?” She had no idea what Jean was talking about.

“We have to go now,” Rob told them. “Your mum needs to sleep.”

As they walked back with Rob to his father's car, Jean asked, “What happened to Mum's hair?”

“The doctor had to cut it off to put stitches in where she was hurt,” Rob explained.

“Mum'll no' like that.”

“Mum will get better, and come home, and her hair will grow again,” Annie said, her voice with a false confidence that made Rob reach for her hand. She let him. For once, she let herself be eleven again.

•   •   •

Mae Bell was sedated for the first two days. Dehydrated and exhausted, she had lost so much weight, her skin crinkled like a crepe bandage. As she had no relatives, no one was allowed to visit her except the Reverend Duncan Macdonald, in his capacity as hospital chaplain.

“I can't pretend she's my fiancée,” McAllister told them. “Although Joanne doesn't know it, I'm engaged to her—as far as the hospital is concerned.”

“About time you made it official,” Don told him.

On the fourth day, Mae Bell was moved into the main ward. McAllister visited, held her hand. He was not good for her; he was too distraught at the thought of Joanne having irreversible brain damage. To be cheerful and sympathetic for Mae, he needed a strength he did not have.

Mae did not want to remember the ordeal and the events leading up to them, so the second time he came to visit, she
said, “Go away, McAllister. Only come back when you can cheer me up.”

Rob and Frankie came together and separately; Rob was not good company either. He came in the visiting hour, asked how she was, told her Joanne was on the mend, saying nothing of the uncertainty for a full recovery, and left after ten or so minutes. Then he would drive back to work. Or home to sit with his mother.

Margaret McLean had taken him to the doctor just as she had when he was a boy. Dr. Matheson had read about the case in the
Gazette
. He and the rest of the community did not know that, when moved, Mrs. Forbes's head had parted from her body. Sleeping pills were prescribed. Rob did not take them.

Although those close to him knew his spirits were perilously close to shutdown, to most he was a hero. The prevailing wisdom was,
Rob McLean rescued Joanne Ross and the American woman—a real hero.

So, he killed someone? So did many men in this town, this country, this world. Only recently.

Gino Corelli was Mae Bell's constant visitor. He and Chiara had attempted to visit Joanne and were told,
not yet
. Gino was left with a dozen out-of-season red roses he'd ordered from the south. He knew Mae Bell was in the hospital. As a refugee himself, released before WWII had ended from an internment camp for Italians, he knew what it was like to be a stranger in an unknown land, lost to friends and country.

He eventually found her ward in the maze of separate buildings that made up the hospital. He walked down the ward to her bed, his polished Sunday shoes squeaking on the polished linoleum floor, his hat in one hand, flowers in the other.

He made Mae smile. “Red roses are for lovers,” she murmured. “Thank you, Mr. Corelli.”

He blushed.

She asked after the boy. Gino had no idea who the boy was, and Mae was too tired to explain other than, “He's my son, my husband's son.”

This made no sense to Gino Corelli.

Mae told him, “The nurses say I have to eat, but have you seen the food here? It's . . .” There were no words she could conjure up for the boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, mashed turnips, and the grey pellets of what she was assured was meat. “Mince is what it is,” a fellow patient told her as she examined it as though it might move.
It's the innards of a haggis,
she decided, and couldn't eat it.

Gino visited most evenings; he brought simple dishes like soup in a thermos flask, tiramisù, and fruit already cut up. Even the grapes were deseeded and cut in half. He enjoyed her company; she was almost European and knew what he was talking about when he described a place, a time, sun on the skin and grapes on the vine; she understood what it was to live away from the land of your birth.

She asked him for a pen and paper. She wrote a few words and an address. He went to the post office, sent the telegram.

She asked again about the boy. He had no news, but said he would find out. He asked McAllister, who told him to consult Angus McLean, the solicitor and Rob's father. He told Mr. McLean that Mae Bell said the boy was her late husband's son.

“Ah, that explains it,” the solicitor had said.

Gino did not know, or ask, what was meant by that but came back the same day and told Mae Bell, “Mr. McLean the solicitor will find news of your boy.”

Five days after her rescue, Mae Bell insisted on discharging herself. She was told she would have to sign a form absolving the hospital of responsibility.

“Where do I sign?” she asked.

The doctor said, “You need monitoring. You need to put on weight.”

“With this hospital food?” she asked.

He had the grace to smile.

Mae Bell was to stay at McAllister's house, where Granny Ross had installed herself as daytime housekeeper.

“I'll look after Mrs. Bell,” she said when McAllister told her that Mae was coming out of hospital. “Where else should the poor soul be stopping except wi' friends?”

Frankie volunteered to collect Mae Bell from hospital. He asked for time off work. His superior said no and threatened to sack him. Frankie said, “Go ahead.”

When he arrived, she was in a wheelchair. Mrs. Ross Senior had packed a small bag with some of Mae Bell's own clothes.

“I'll dress later,” she told Frankie, “but first, take me to see Joanne.”

Joanne was still in Intensive Care. It was not visiting hours. Visiting was restricted to family only.

Frankie spotted a white jacket hanging inside the open door of a sluice room. He put it on. He wheeled Mae to the Intensive Care ward. There was no need to make Mae look like she belonged there; in the hideous hospital nightie and dressing gown, her face showing every hour of her captivity, she did not look out of place. When a nurse looked up, Frankie smiled. The young nurse smiled back. Frankie carried on as though he worked there.

He found Joanne's bed. When Mae saw the drips and trappings of serious illness, she felt she would faint.

“Hi there.” She leaned out of the chair and stroked Joanne's hand.

Joanne opened her eyes. “Mae Bell.”

“Honey.”

Joanne looked at her. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks.” Mae's eyes filled up. “So do you.” They smiled.

“Why are you here?” Joanne asked.

Mae Bell couldn't answer.

Joanne closed her eyes. They were silent for so long, Frankie looked around the curtain to make sure they were both still breathing.

“See you soon, my dear dear friend,” Mae whispered.

Joanne managed an upturn of the lips. “Your nightie is really horrible.”

“It sure ain't Paris fashion.” Mae put on a deliberate drawl, gave a deliberate slow shake of the head, which hurt. She smiled. “Night-night. Sleep tight.”

Frankie pulled the wheelchair away, waving at the nurse as he passed. He took Mae to the car. As he was lifting her into the back-seat, he saw the wet face, the teardrops on the gown. He felt how little she weighed. He felt every rib, every bone. The anger over Mae's imprisonment, Joanne's nearly dying, and the pain of losing his mother combined burnt a crevasse into his soul.

He walked round to the driver's side, took a moment to breath deeply. He knew then that he was not and never would be the same Frankie Urquhart—shinty player, music promoter, generally decent sunny young man whom everyone liked.

And all through that week, a week of policemen, of interviews, of death and its aftermath, a Fatal Accident Enquiry, confrontation, reflection, and recovery, those closest involved never mentioned the events to each other.

Except Don McLeod. He had a newspaper to publish.

Frankie had told Rob he had lost his job in the gentlemen's department of Arnotts and he didn't care.

Rob told Don.

Don asked, “Can he sell?”

Rob assured him Frankie could sell kilts to a fully dressed regimental pipe band and then some.

Don said, “When can he start?”

Frankie Urquhart started the next day as an advertising clerk at the
Highland Gazette
. With much help from Fiona, he quickly got the hang of it.

The
Gazette
came out. On time. Don and Hector and Fiona and Frankie and Mr. Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle—known as Beech to friends and colleagues—were astonished at their achievement.

“Aye, well, as long as nobody spots the plagiarism,” Don said to Beech as they shared a post-publication dram. “Our rivals had some good articles on what happened. All I did was a wee rewrite.”

“The procurator fiscal's inquiry into Moira Forbes's death . . .” How do you think Rob will hold up?” Beech asked.

“He'll get through it.” Don was certain of that. “But he'll never be the same, right enough.”

Across the river, at home in her bungalow, Margaret McLean was thinking the same. She watched her son walking around in a dwam. Others might think he was coping well, might be fooled by his normal, I'm-the-cock-o'-the-walk smiles, his black jokes. She wasn't. She vowed,
I will do everything I can to bring back my laughing, innocent son, even if it means sending him away from here, from me.

And across town, up the steep of St. Stephen's Brae, along a wide road, past the academy, and down a crescent-shaped terrace, McAllister was home in bed. He was about to switch off the bedside light when he sat up straight, clasped his hands as though about to ask for the Lord's intervention, and said to himself,
I will bring back Joanne, bring home that laughing beautiful woman, well, and healed, and smiling, and dancing. I will look after her for the rest of our lives.

I
n the prison, only a few streets from McAllister's house, DI Dunne was once more interviewing Mal Forbes. For the first few days, Mal Forbes had been incoherent, sobbing, wailing, “Moira, ma poor lass. Moira.”

The inspector was afraid Forbes would be declared mentally unfit for questioning. But the prison doctor was unmoved. “He's had a shock—he's been found out, his wife is dead. But no, I see no reason whatsoever to declare him of unsound mind.”

When Mal Forbes was brought in, DI Dunne and WPC Ann McPherson were waiting in a prison interview room that smelled of caves. The first thing the policewoman noticed was how small the man was. Not so much short, although he wasn't much more than five foot six, but how his skeleton seemed to belong to a twelve-year-old, making his head look too big for his body.

Mal sat down. He placed his hands, clasped in prayer, on the table. He looked at WPC McPherson and asked, “How's my boy? He's scared of strangers, you know. And he doesn't like bright lights. He really likes porridge, though. And daffodils.”

“He's not your boy,” WPC McPherson said, her voice tight and controlled, not looking at Mal Forbes. The monster, she called him, but only to herself. “The child is being well looked after.” How Mal Forbes could think the child was his was beyond her comprehension.

“Have you seen him smile?” Mal asked. “Like a wee ray o' sunshine.”

The man turns my stomach,
WPC McPherson was thinking, unaware of her clenched fists, her foot tapping the stone floor.

“And how's my Maureen?”

“She's back in Elgin with your family,” DI Dunne answered.

“She'll like that. My cousin Effie makes great scones and . . .”

“We're not here to discuss scones, Mr. Forbes.” The policewoman was barely able to control the vibrato in her voice. “You and your wife kidnapped Mrs. Mae Bell. Mrs. Joanne Ross was attacked and almost died, and one or both of you were responsible for the death of Nurse Urquhart.”

“No. We never . . . No. Moira, she didn't mean it, she wasnae thinking right.”

“You hid the women. You and your wife kept them locked up.”

“Mr. Forbes.” DI Dunne felt that the anger from his colleague was appropriate and was happy to let her be the baddie. “Do you understand the charges against you?”

“The charges? No. Not really. I never did those things you say I did.”

The policewoman took the official papers and summarized the charges for the third time that week. “Abduction, criminal neglect of a child, perverting the course of justice, aiding and abetting a kidnapping, attempted murder, and of course murder.”