Beneath the Abbey Wall (10 page)

Don took another cigarette, striking a match with his thumbnail—a prison gesture—then McAllister remembered it was probably a legacy of Don's years in the merchant navy.

“So”—Don spoke through an outbreath of smoke—“much as I'd like to think Archie did it himself, it's no' possible. And Bahadur, he never killed her either. He was right fond of Joyce and he loved her father.”

McAllister remembered the next puzzle in the life and death of Mrs. Smart. “Why did Mrs. Smart, Joyce, leave a bequest to Jenny McPhee?”

Don shrugged.

“Were they friends?”

“You'll have to ask Jenny that.”

“For God's sake, Don, will you do nothing to help yourself?”

Don shrugged again and looked away. It was only the flash of
despair that passed quickly over Don's face, to be just as quickly replaced by his usual nonchalance. Only that stopped McAllister from reaching over and giving him a good shaking.

“A knife was found in your courtyard.”

“Aye, a filleting knife that's been there for years. Well used it is, too—that's why it's so sharp. Next to where the knife is kept is a tap, and a drain, and a slab o' marble. You canny fillet fish indoors. Of course no one will listen, no one believes me . . . ”

“Time's up, Mr. McAllister.” The guard stepped into the room.

“Can you think of anything that would help get you out of here?” McAllister asked.

“All those secrets.” Don was staring at his fists, speaking to himself. He looked up as McAllister stood. “I'll no' betray her confidence, even though she's gone. But ask yourself why thon waste o' space o' a man was in such a hurry to bury her. Start there.” The anger in Don's voice was quiet with the rage of someone who, although not guilty of this murder, might become guilty of another.

Probably a good idea to have him out of harm's way,
thought McAllister,
for now.
He nodded a farewell.

Don nodded back, saying, “Next time, see if you canny sneak in a wee drop o' the hard stuff.”

“I didn't hear that, Donnie McLeod,” McAllister heard the guard say as he was walking away towards another guard waiting with another excessive bunch of keys.

*  *  *  

Thinking Sunday might be a good day to track down the McPhees, McAllister was driving out of town, against the flow of the Sunday-church-kirk-chapel-meetinghouse traffic. Walking to worship, no matter the weather, was the custom. But the old ways were vanishing, more and more people driving. Heading
down the road, the ferry his destination, and the eldest McPhee son's council house. No one was in.

“Do you know where Mr. Keith McPhee is?” he asked a lad with a runny nose and constant sniff who was sitting astride a bike, staring at him.

“What's it worth?”

“Thruppence.”

“Gie me two cigarettes and I'll tell you.”

Since he had started smoking at thirteen himself, there was not much McAllister could say, so he shook out two cigarettes, and the boy told him that Keith McPhee and his wife were in Glasgow. He grinned up at McAllister, then seeing the way the man's eyes narrowed, he added, “Mrs. McPhee, the auld one, and Jimmy McPhee, they've
been
staying here, but they left.”

“Where did they go?” Two more cigarettes were held out.

The boy said, “Try Muir of Ord. The tinkies' camp.”

Next time I'll bring Woodbines, my good cigarettes are wasted on boys,
McAllister thought.

It was only when the stranger was getting into his car that the boy noticed the strange shape and smell of the cigarettes.

“Hey, what's this foreign rubbish?” he shouted. But the car had taken off to catch the ferry.

It took some time for McAllister to find the Travelers' camp, as there were few people around to give directions. When he arrived at the strung-out collection of vans, lorries, three caravans, and five traditional benders, it took some finding to get anyone who would point out Jimmy McPhee's caravan, which was slightly apart from the others, with two ponies hobbled nearby.

“I'd like to talk with your mother,” McAllister said when Jimmy opened the caravan door.

“Aye, there's many a person who'd like a word with my mother—but few she'd give the time o' day to.”

“I visited Don McLeod in prison yesterday.”

“Oh, aye?” Jimmy took his time in considering the request before deciding to hand over the decision to his mother. “Ma won't be far along the road. We'll take your car.”

Jimmy didn't say, but McAllister guessed that DI Dunne would be one of those wanting a word. The solicitor for Sergeant Major Smart another. The connection between Jenny and Mrs. Smart had not been known, and McAllister knew the matriarch of the Traveling clan wished it had stayed that way.

Jenny McPhee had endured the police interviews with patience, knowing that what she had to hide was her secret alone; Joyce Mackenzie had taken her part in the story to the grave.

Jenny McPhee had nothing against DI Dunne; what she had learned of him in the past had made her think of him favorably—or as favorably as a tinker could think of a policeman. He said he believed her when she had told him she was completely unaware of Joyce's intentions, and not particularly happy about the bequest. “To be left anything, far less her jewelry, is not what I wanted,” she had told the inspector. “And no good will come of it, no good at all.”

Jenny McPhee, like most tinkers and Highlanders, was superstitious. But it was not superstition that made her take to the road—it was a sense that the ripples from Joyce's death were spreading.

She had told her son Jimmy her destination. No one else. She was headed to a Travelers' camping place, one renowned for peace and beauty and fresh running water. She needed solitude, but her youngest son Geordie was with her; he was good with horses. Traveling alone was no longer an option; her knees hurt and her back was not what it once had been. But, as she did not want to be noticed, a single canvas-covered cart was less
conspicuous, less likely to irritate the lorries belting northwestward on the main road to the farthest ends of Scotland.

Jenny McPhee had a fine sense of obligation. She owed Joyce Mackenzie her life and the life of her sons. Not life as in death, but life as in freedom; freedom to be a tinker woman and raise her family without living in terror of the welfare taking her children from her to abandon them in an institution “for their own good,” with no word to the parents about where their offspring were, no hope of ever getting them back. That was what Joyce Mackenzie and her father had done for Jenny McPhee. What she had done in return had been so little, Jenny thought, and what that was she would never tell.

She hated the sergeant major and wanted him found guilty of killing Joyce, Mrs. Smart, whether he had done it or not. But with his disability, she accepted it was highly unlikely he had done it.

“No, lass,” she muttered to herself as the cart negotiated the ups and downs and twists and elbows of the road, “leave it be. It'll only bring trouble.”

Jenny was found eighteen miles farther up the road. The sight of McAllister did not please her.

“Jimmy.” Her voice, like a sharp bark from an old vixen to her cubs, made McAllister jump.

Jimmy grinned at his mother. “I already told him you didney want to talk to anybody.”

Jenny was seated at the front of the high dray, the horse's reins resting lightly in one hand. Geordie was walking behind leading the spare horse. The cart was the same as those used by the milkman or the coalman or the rag and bone collector; honest, sturdy, no decoration, little paint. But the tinkers' cart had a shallow roof made from tarpaulins slung over metal hoops high enough to sleep under or sit up, but not stand. String, rope, and
baling twine weighted with river stones held the canvas down. A collection of pails and tin tubs were slung underneath and off the back. A misshapen bundle wrapped in blue wool that might contain anything from firewood to artificial limbs was secured to the back by a very substantial rope—a hangman's thickness of rope.

The whole catastrophe, including Jenny, was not picturesque, not a sight tourists would want to point their box Brownie at; there was little romantic about the lives of the Traveling people of the North.

“Don McLeod could be facing the rest of his life in prison.” McAllister spoke in a flat voice, neither asking for help nor expecting any, only stating a fact, but knowing that to a Traveler this was worse than death.

“I'm making for the auld camp about a mile further up,” Jenny said. “Meet you there.”

McAllister and Jimmy reached the place where the river made a semicircular loop around a flat area strewn with gravel, driftwood, ferns, and flood debris. The sound of water running over rocks drew them over to the border of hazel and willow and birch. Large lichen-splattered boulders as large as giants' marbles lay along the edge of the riverbed, some in, some out of the water.

They lit up.

Standing smoking, looking at the light dancing through the gold red bronze lime last of the autumn leaves, McAllister's eye was drawn to the high hillside where pines stood in ranks determined to give neither shelter nor solace to flora or fauna.

Across the road the lower slopes of Ben Wyvis looked equally uninviting. The long slow incline of heather and bog cotton gave a lie to the name mountain; it looked like, and was a similar color to, a squat toad.

But the campsite between the desolations had grazing for horses, clusters of trees for shelter, and a well-blackened circle of
stones—the site of centuries of campfires. More than that, the place had the calm of a great cathedral.

As they waited for Jenny to catch up, they did not speak much. They were not friends, but there was respect. They shared a highly developed sense of justice that did not necessarily involve the law, and had collaborated once in a highly criminal act of justice. McAllister knew he and Jimmy, and Jenny for that matter, would help Don, legally or otherwise.

When the horse and cart arrived, Jenny climbed down and handed McAllister a large blackened kettle.

“Make yerself useful.” She nodded towards the sound of water.

The only other contribution McAllister could make was to fetch the whisky from the car.

With the horses settled, the tea made, the bread and cheese and onion handed around, and the gloaming giving way to the first stars, they were glad of the fire. With whisky warming inner parts and the dimming of the light, the conversation could begin.

“How's he holding up?” Jenny asked, not needing to say who “he” was.

“Asking for whisky.”

“Speaking of which . . . ” Jenny held out a tin mug. McAllister obliged.

“Another thing Don said was to ask myself why Mrs. Smart, Joyce, was buried in such haste.” He did not expect an explanation, just throwing out a line.

“Archie Smart knows the answer to that. Ask him what he's hiding.”

“Do you know?”

Like all of her clan, she avoided direct questions. “I'll no' break my word,” she said, “but start at the beginning and poke around. After all, isn't that what you do for a living?”

He could feel but not see the grin in her voice.

“Joyce Smart, Mackenzie, was your friend.” He was provoking her, wanting her to say more.

“Aye, she was. And her old father, bless him, he was a good man too.”

“Not just to us,” Jimmy joined in, “they were good to all us Traveler folk.”

“The Mackenzie family did far more for us than we ever did for them.” Jenny was emphatic on that point. “If it hadn't been for Joyce we'd have lost more children. But I sorely wish she hadn't put me in her will.”

They were quiet for a moment, but McAllister had to ask. “Lost them?”

It took a long noisy silence—running water, wind in leaves, the seashore sound of pines, the night birds, the furtive deaths of small creatures at the mercy of larger small creatures, before Jenny could bring herself to start her story. She fixed her eyes on the distance or perhaps the Evening Star.

“When your child dies, you put them in the ground. You visit their grave, lay flowers, lucky white heather. You can talk to them, sing to them, you know they are there. But when your child is taken from you . . . ” She left the sentence hanging.

It was not that she didn't know what to say, how to describe the years of searching, imagining what they looked like, how they had grown up. It was rather that, if expressed in words, it would lighten the blackness, cheapen the pain, and the lost boys needed her to hold onto that to keep them alive.

No,
she thought,
no one can know. So there is no point in telling.

She stood. She brushed off her skirt as though the gesture would banish the memories. “Be off with you, McAllister. I'm up with the dawn so I'm needing ma bed.” But she knew she would not sleep well.

As the sound of the car disappeared over the hill, Jenny went to douse the campfire. But the bloodred embers cast their spell, and she found herself mesmerized, staring into the remains of the fire. She took an unlabeled flat bottle from the depths of her skirt pocket and poured another dram into the tin mug. Sipping the colorless liquor that tasted of heather and seaweed and pine, she looked up into the Milky Way. A shooting star in the northwest quadrant of the sky—over Assynt, she thought—fell earthward. She smiled.

“I promise,” she told Joyce. “It may take a whiley, though. And lass, much as I appreciate you remembering me, I wish you hadn't let the world know.”

Geordie saw and heard his mother muttering as she poked at the fire, the sparks flying heavenward to join those other glowing embers. He kept his distance. He had no idea why they had set out on a trip so late in the year, and he would never ask. She was his mother, but he too had a healthy fear of the legendary Jenny McPhee.