A Small Death in the Great Glen (25 page)

Another page. C
ANAL LOCK
, he headed the new page, half a mile from where he was last seen. Right, what next? Rob pictured the track leading to the canal towpath and the locks. Lined with elder bushes, and stands of whin and gorse, there was not much cover there. The stretch of road where the boy had disappeared was a much more likely place to grab a small child. The Victorian and Edwardian mansions sat in large grounds, the curved driveways hiding the houses from passersby, quiet, ideal for the setting of a Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie mystery. When he was little he had thought of one of them as a Scottish version of Bleak House. The mature sycamores, the oak and the beech trees, one magnificent copper beech, a holly tree or two, a stand of firs where he used to collect cones for the McLean household fire—his mother loved the scent—chestnut trees, at this time of year thick with conkers and after school, thick with boys collecting
said conkers, this veritable urban forest would provide great cover for nefarious deeds.

Then there were the rhododendrons, a favorite of Edwardian gardeners, which with the soil of Scotland, not much different from their Himalayan home, had flourished. High roundels of dark green, with dark dry caves under the thick glossy leaves, it took a very heavy rain to penetrate the earth underneath. This enclave of middle-class respectability where Rob had grown up he now saw differently, changed by the knowledge of a terrible event. A great location for a horror film. Rob could see it. But a horror really did happen, he reminded himself. So …

A policeman had rung their doorbell, that night, late, asking after the boy. No one had seen anything, his dad told the constable. Ringing doorbells—he smiled. His mother had tried to be cross with him, when he was wee, when a neighbor complained. He said he would stop ringing doorbells in their street, and he had. Just moved on to a street further away. A few nights ago his mother laughed, telling him about Joanne's Annie. First time he had heard of a girl playing the game. Good for her, he thought, I like her, she's brave, has a mind of her own. I wonder if she knows anything at all about what happened to Jamie. Says she doesn't, but that doesn't mean much. Except … Rob remembered the story of the hoodie crow—where did that come from? Maybe Annie will talk to me, her uncle Rob. I'll bribe her with a shot on the bike.

The gavel banged hard and loud. Rob switched back to the here and now; twelve o'clock, Monday, October, the sheriff's court, the mid–nineteen fifties, the Highlands of Scotland, the world.

“Twenty-eight days this time,” the sheriff pronounced. “I'm sick of the sight of you every Monday morning.”

The drunk looked aggrieved. “Can you no make it three months? I'll miss out on ma Christmas plum duff otherwise.”

They were alone in the office; the others had left a good hour since.

“I'm thinking I'll go back down south for a few days. After we've got this edition to bed, of course.”

Don grunted. He wasn't not listening to McAllister; he was flicking through a sheaf of rejected copy trying to find something the right length to fill in a hole left by an advertisement dropping out—and it was five minutes before the presses were due to roll.

“It's time I saw my mother—” McAllister continued, but the phone interrupted. He reached across the reporter's desk. “
Gazette.
No, he's busy.” Don was shaking his head. “No. Can you call back? All right, I'll tell him. Hold on.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “It's your man, Mr. Burke, says it's important.”

Don looked up at the clock, three minutes. He reached over for the phone.

“A bit late for you to be calling. Aye. Aye. What?” He sat abruptly. “You must be very very certain. You are?” He listened. “Christ!” More tweetering came from the receiver. “No, of course not. Not a word to anyone.” He put down the phone. McAllister waited.

“The boy was interfered with before he died.”

T
EN
 
 

The glass-domed Victorian fancy-cake cathedral of a railway station never failed to impress McAllister. Platform after platform of puffing hissing engines resembling the starting gate at the racetrack, the nervous animals waiting for the off, was the first sight of the city for many arriving from the towns and villages and clachans of the Highlands and Islands.

McAllister jumped on a tram and with a lurch it clanked off through the city. The Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank, Clydesdale Bank, Corn Exchange, all the monumental edifices around George Square, were familiar landmarks. He had passed them every day as a scholarship boy off to the Glasgow High School for Boys. The glories of wealth and history were pockmarked by bomb craters, bright pink with fireweed; daytime playground for children and dogs, nighttime territory of drunks and prostitutes. The tram trundled on up Duke Street. Glimpses of the cathedral and the necropolis flashed by up the steep side streets, marble angels silhouetted against the sky, wings outstretched, awaiting a photo opportunity.

The tram halted outside Duke Street jail. The high walls as daunting as ever, songs and stories of the inmates, the executions, hung in the air; McAllister felt a frisson of childish fright that never quite went away, even in middle age. He walked swiftly up the hill to home, never lingering, never looking to left nor right, another habit from his school days, his body remembering the many kickings on these steep pavements. The uniform, especially the cap, was a shining invitation to those he'd left behind,
betrayed, the high school badge marking him a traitor. And his being a Catholic in this Protestant stronghold was another reason for the terrors he had suffered as a small boy.

He rang, waited. A faint shuffling came down the hall and the door slowly opened.

“John.” The flat voice revealed no surprise, no emotion.

“Mother,” he replied to the woman he had not seen for over a year.

She shuffled back to her warm kitchen with the gas oven lit, the door left open.

“It's easier than fetching in coal.” She nodded to the cooker.

“I'll get some. Light the fire if you like.”

“Suit yerself.”

McAllister left his bag and coat in the hallway, took the battered brass coal scuttle outside to their coal hole in the back green, crouching under the scant city stars to fill it. He remembered the fights with his dad about his jobs.

“I have to do my homework, Dad. It's too dark, Dad. I did it last night, Dad. And the night before. It's his turn, he never does anything.”

He never ever won the argument. Never would now. His brother never made sixteen and his dad was another statistic of the firebombing of Clydeside; firemen, fire engines, a shipyard, all gone in one night.

The coal caught slowly. The kindling, a splintered crate, sparked blue.

“So, how's it been, Ma? Did you get my letters?”

“I'm no one for writing, you know that, John.”

“I wish you'd let me get a phone in for you.”

“Nobody in our street has a phone. What would the neighbors think?”

No point in arguing; he knew he'd never win.

“I'll catch up with some auld friends at the
Herald
before I go back up north.”

“Oh aye.” Huddling into herself, tugging her old cardigan tight, the tweed skirt wrinkled around her knees, she looked like a refugee.

A refugee from life. McAllister sighed under the weight of the thought.

“Will you be biding here long?”

“Just the two nights, if that's all right?”

“It's your home, John.”

His home; from where he went to school, served his cadetship, left for a war and emerged the sole survivor of the family tragedies.

“A pint and a half.”

McAllister looked around. His pals from the news desk would be in for the mid-evening break any moment. The double swing doors let in a rush of damp cold air and two roly-poly middle-aged men so alike, they looked like a pair of wally dugs off the mantelpiece.

“Mac, how's it going?” Smiles and handshakes all round. “How's the teuchters treatin' you?”

“Grand, just grand. What'll you have?”

“A pint an' a half for us both. Still got a paper to get oot.”

Both men poured their half gill into the pint in the traditional manner and gave a simultaneous sigh of satisfaction as the first sip relaxed them into their evening break.

“What brings you down here, apart from needing to visit civilization now and again?”

McAllister laughed. “There's not many would think ‘Glasgow' and ‘civilized' fitted into the same sentence. No, I came to see my mother for the anniversary.”

“Oh. Aye. Must still be painful for her. You don't get over an accident like that. Burying a child—it's no right.”

It was no accident, he didn't say; they, his friends, his colleagues, thought him obsessed. The memory hanging, they all stared into their glasses for an awkward second.

Willie Graham, the shorter and rounder of the two journalists, glanced at the big wall clock.

“Time for a half-pint, then we must be getting back.” He signaled the order. “See you've a wee bit of bother up your way. The Polish man must be feart for his safety in the local gaol.”

“It's certainly a shock in a small town where everybody knows everything.”

“No like here, then. You'd be hard-put to run all the bad stories in this place.”

“The gangs still about, then?”

“In control, more like.”

A clock's chime cut through the buzz of the bar. They downed the dregs of their drinks, held out a farewell hand, then hurried back to the late shift on the news desk, John McAllister's former life.

He had returned to the tenement soon after closing time, a couple more beers and whiskies closer to the wind. Opening the door to the front room, a small lamp of the religious variety lit up the family shrine. He picked up the solitary photo of himself on the china cabinet; thirteen he was, in his brand-new school uniform that had cost his father three months of overtime. A wedding picture of a strangely solemn bride and groom and a formal photo of a group of firemen, indistinguishable in their uniforms, were to left and right. He put on the main light, too tired to sleep. He picked up a photo with his father and friends smiling out through the years. A
good man, so everyone said, and McAllister agreed, “… the best.” He put the picture back.