Beneath the Abbey Wall (23 page)

Rob immediately asked, “What happened?”

McAllister had to admit that he had put his foot in the door in an attempt to speak to Gurkha Bahadur.

“He is unavailable,” the sergeant major had said before deliberately swinging the door shut on McAllister's foot.

“The rotten swine . . . ” Joanne said as she came into the reporters' room, catching the end of the tale.

McAllister lit a cigarette. “Good of you to join us, Mrs. Ross.”

“But I was . . . ” It was her turn to flap her wrists.

McAllister had an enormous capacity for intellectual reasoning and a limited capacity for emotional self-analysis and could not believe how painful it was to be with Joanne.
It hurts worse than my foot
.

He turned to Rob. “Sergeant Major Smart has charged me with assault. Your father thinks he'll drop the charges in return for me not countersuing
him
for assault.”

Rob grinned. “I'm sure my father will win the argument. But what happened?”

“What have we for this week?” McAllister did not want to discuss the ignominy of a broken toe.

“‘Editor of local newspaper charged with assault?'” Rob suggested.

The silence that followed, the absolute stillness of McAllister—apart from the curl of smoke coming from the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—made them all hold their breath.

“Is there any news on Mr. McLeod?” Hector broke in. “Any progress on the case?”

“He's in hospital. He's as well as can be expected, but it's hard for him to talk. And no, there's no progress in his case.”

“Why no'?” Hector looked across at McAllister. “Why aren't we doing anything?”

“We will get this newspaper out. We will do all we can. We will—”

“Most of the pages are filled with the usual,” Neil broke in, “but we need a front page.” He hesitated. “I'm assuming the rival press will report Mr. McLeod's attempt to . . . his being admitted to hospital.” Neil looked around. “It
is
news.” He held his hands out in a half apology.

“See if the story turns up in the Aberdeen daily. If it does, you write it up, you're neutral in all this.” McAllister got to his feet. Winced at the pain. His stick clattered to the floor. Hec retrieved it for him. All four of them looked at one another as they listened to his shuffle down the stairs.

Rob was about to turn on Hec, but the photographer got in first. “I'm no' sorry for asking. Mr. McLeod will be before the judge in three, no, four weeks.” He gathered up some contact sheets, put them into his schoolbag, and left.

“I have the front page for you, Neil,” Rob told him. “An old acquaintance of ours—Mrs. Janet Ord Mackenzie—is up for sentencing this morning. She killed a farmhand on her estate. Although everyone knows the story, I can spice it up enough for a front-page splash plus a full inside-page story.” He shook his motorbike jacket off and put on the smart blazer he kept on a hanger for court-reporting duties. “Joanne will fill you in on it.” He smoothed down his hair. “See you later.”

They waited about thirty seconds, then Neil reached out for her hand and pulled her to him.

“Good morning, Mrs. Stewart.”

“Don't say that.”

“I'm joking.” He leaned his head on her shoulder.

That's why I don't want you to say it,
Joanne was thinking. But she said nothing. His hand strayed to her lower back, was caressing her, making her shiver. She stood back a pace. “Neil, not here.”

“Where? When?”

That was the problem. “I don't know,” she said. “Certainly not at my place. No, wait, maybe you could come over on Wednesday. The girls stay with their grandparents on press nights.” She was breaking her self-made rule: never have anyone male in her house, her refuge; not because she might be found out, more because it was her sanctuary.

“I'll try to keep my hands busy typing until then . . . Now, the sentencing of Mrs. Double Barreled, what's that about?”

“Mrs. Ord Mackenzie, right, well, a few months ago, last Easter . . . ” And she told him the story of the double death on the Black Isle estate of her friend Patricia, not forgetting to mention her front-page scoop, her very first lead story, and he was duly appreciative.
I love him,
she thought,
and he's leaving.
But now, there was a glimmer of hope.
So I must ask Hector as soon as possible.

*  *  *  

It was early afternoon before Joanne managed to find herself alone with Hector. “Hector, I was wondering if you could do something for me? Something personal.”

“Oh aye?” He didn't mind doing favors and assumed it was the usual—taking pictures of children—and he liked Joanne's girls, especially Annie, who was friends with his sister.

“It's a bit tricky.” She hesitated, then came straight out with it. “I want you to take compromising pictures of my husband, Bill, with Betsy Buchanan so I can get a divorce.”

“What?”

It was not that Hec hadn't heard or didn't understand, it was that he did not do that type of work, no matter that it would have made him money. He had been asked to do this before, usually by solicitors who specialized in divorce—although divorce was rare, and he had always refused. In Hector's opinion it was tacky, there was no artistic merit in it, and he would have to appear in court to verify when and where he had taken the pictures.

“I can't do that, Joanne.” His voice was quiet, but the underlying hurt was clear. “We work with Betsy.”

“Betsy wants this too.
She
will tell you when and where to take the pictures.”

“What?” Now he was completely confused.

“But my husband mustn't know. Or anyone else.”

“If my granny hears of it, she'll throw me out.” Hector was jiggling from foot to foot, completely confused by the request. “Ma granny, she said
no smutty pictures,
and she'll find out, 'cos I'll have to go to court and tell how I got the pictures.”

“Really?” Rob was standing in the doorway. “What have you done this time?”

“Mind your own business, Rob McLean,” Joanne snapped.

“Sorry I spoke.”

He looked at her. She looked away. She ran down the stairs, out into the wind. It was nearly November, and the chill was getting to her bones. But her face was hot. She pulled her cardigan tight, crossing her arms, tucking her chin in, but the wind still penetrated the layers of cardigan and jumper and cotton vest.

“Damn and blast,” she was muttering when McAllister appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, saying, “I agree.”

“McAllister, don't sneak up like that! You gave me a fright.”

“I'd ask you to have coffee with me but I don't think I can walk across town. Maybe later?”

“Maybe. I have to get back, I'm freezing out here.”

He watched her run into the
Gazette
office and once more agreed.
It is freezing,
he was thinking,
and it's more than the weather.

*  *  *  

McAllister's only positive news came at the end of the day from Angus McLean.

“I'm phoning to let you know Sergeant Major Smart has dropped the charge against you.”

McAllister thanked him.

“I have a meeting on Thursday with the advocate from Edinburgh. He and his assistant will be here to prepare the defense. Would you care to join us?”

McAllister agreed. He started to make notes for the meeting, then called out across the landing for Rob.

“Shut the door.”

Rob did and took a chair.

“Have you spoken to your nurse friend?”

“Tonight. She has a day off and is sleeping for most of it, she said.”

“Ask her about the knife—who would know where it was kept. And anything that might be useful.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry, Rob. I know you know what you're doing. I only wish I did.” He lit another cigarette, the first of his third packet of the day. “I have no idea what's wrong with me. I can't sleep, I can't make decisions, my judgment is haywire, I feel powerless, I can't find anything to free Don.”

“This advocate from Edinburgh has a good reputation,” Rob told him. “Let's put together all the information we have, and hope he can make more sense of it than us.”

“Let's hope so.” McAllister did not sound optimistic but at least it was a plan.

*  *  *  

That evening, as Rob drove over the Black Bridge to see Eilidh, he remembered McAllister's instructions: ask about the knife.
Of course,
Rob had thought,
that's obvious, but what else might Eilidh know
?

He had been shocked by the editor's lack of clarity; he was used to McAllister's insight, he couldn't believe how his hero was floundering. He knew the situation with Don was dire, so why was McAllister so indecisive? Neither Rob nor McAllister himself was aware that Joanne's abandonment might be contributing to the editor's overwhelming sense of loss. All Rob could see was how slowly the man thought and moved, as though wading through emotional and spiritual tar.

He arrived at the end of Church Street and switched off the bike engine. As instructed, he parked on the opposite side and further down from the passageway leading to Eilidh's terrace.

The gate was closed but unlocked, just as she said it would be. He hesitated before pushing it open and turned to look again at the path leading to the steps down to the footbridge—the steps between the church and abbey wall, the steps where Mrs. Smart had been murdered. It was raining slightly. Just as it had been on that night. A damp misty rain, which, if you looked out a window you couldn't be certain was rain except for the shine on the slate roofs, the paving stones, the cobbled street, weather that made driving a motorbike horribly dangerous, and made murder or a haunting no surprise.

He went down the passageway between and under the first floor of the buildings, where the roof was not high. Wide enough to get a coffin through; that was the saying about these
old buildings. In the courtyard—the size of the sitting room in a grand house like that of Countess Sokolov—Rob stood looking at the empty windows in Don's house. Less than two months empty, and the one-down, one-up terrace felt as desolate as a cottage from the Highland Clearances.

He knocked on Eilidh's door, needing warmth and light and hopefully some cuddling.

“Hiya.” She opened the door and pulled Rob in. “It's freezing out there.” She had a quick look around, saw no one, and shut the door. “I don't want anyone to see you. My parents would make me live at home if they knew I had a man visiting.”

“Do you want me to lock the gate?” Rob asked.

“Please.” She pulled open the cutlery drawer and handed him a brass key that looked as though it would open a pirate's treasure chest. “With the house next door empty and Mr. McLeod's house . . . I'm alone here, so I keep the gate locked.”

“When did the house next door become empty?”

“Oh, two years or so ago.”

Damn,
Rob thought,
no witnesses there
.

When he came back in, Eilidh had put the kettle on. “Coffee?” She shook the tin of the co-op's own brand of instant coffee.

Rob's heart sank. “Love some.”

“This wee place belonged to my mother's mother,” she explained, “and when she died, my parents let me have it for as long as I'm at the hospital.”
Then they expect me to train as a district nurse, and return home or at least marry someone respectable, preferably a doctor who will settle somewhere in my father's parish and we can all go to his church together and listen to his endless sermons about hell and damnation and . . .
“Sorry?”

“And here was me thinking you'd be hanging on to my words of wit and wisdom.” Rob laughed. “Listen, before we go out—or stay in—I want to ask about Don's fish knife.”

“I know nothing about his stupid knife.” She was fed up with questions from everyone—from the police, from her parents, from colleagues, from the woman in the co-op where she did her shopping, and now Rob. “I keep saying, I've never seen the knife.”

“Aye, but do you know anyone who might know?”

“I suppose the people who lived next door might. They were friends o' Mr. McLeod, so he said. Then there's the usual—the coalman, the binmen, the meter reader, I don't know . . . I suppose Mrs. Hoity Toity must have known, but then again, she didn't stab herself.”

Rob was disconcerted by Eilidh's description of Mrs. Smart until he remembered how correct she could be, how proper and prim she might have seemed to outsiders.

And when Eilidh put the record on the Dansette, he could understand that perhaps there might have been a problem with neighbors over the volume. When Eilidh started to dance or, rather, thump about, he well understood that Mrs. Smart or Don might have said something. When she joined in the chorus—she knew all the lyrics and could manage a fair American accent—Eilidh was loud, and completely tone-deaf.

“Wow,” Rob said when the record had finished, “that was incredible.” He meant it. She went to play it again.

“I'd love a Dansette but it's too expensive for me.” He was lying. He had one. They cost three hundred guineas, and his mother had paid for it to keep the peace, or at least her husband's health; Angus McLean went into the garden whenever Rob played his music on their big record player, and as winters were nine months long, she was happy to indulge her only child if only to prevent her husband from catching pneumonia.

“I haven't paid for it yet.” Eilidh was stroking the case as though it was a pet. “I got it on hire purchase.”

She saw he didn't believe her; hire purchase if you were under twenty-one was impossible.