The Low Road (31 page)

The extended McPhee clan, Jenny's eldest son, her younger sons, and her cousins—who were legion—they were all searching for Jimmy.

No news.

Mary rang daily, talking mostly to Don McLeod.
Thankfully
, McAllister thought, as he did not want a conversation with Mary lest he was tempted to return to his city.

No news.

And every time the telephone rang, at home, at work, every time the postman delivered the mail, his heart began to pound, until he heard the news—no news. The days passed, a week passed, nearly two weeks; McAllister finally gave up hope of ever seeing Jimmy McPhee alive.

The river took him, just like it took my brother,
he thought. Then changed his mind.
No, it was that bastard Gerry Dochery.
But he didn't know it was Gerry.
Whoever it was, I'll get you.
And he vowed, just as he had when he discovered who had driven his brother to take his own life,
I'll get you. Maybe not now, maybe not next week or next year, but I'll get you.

Five more days elapsed. It was Thursday morning, the day after deadline, so a late morning for McAllister. He was sitting at the kitchen table, enjoying the morning quiet that had descended since Granny Ross no longer came around when he was at home; no more muttering when he refused a cooked breakfast, preferring his usual coffee and cigarette. No more arguments between Annie and her grandmother over what she was wearing—too scruffy; what she was reading—too adult; how she was sitting—slouching in her chair; her reading and eating toast—getting crumbs everywhere.

And no longer came the whine of the vacuum cleaner weaving in and around his feet when all McAllister wanted on the morning after deadline was to sit quietly and read the national
newspapers, with his second cup of coffee. Sitting around reading was not an occupation Granny Ross approved of, her being convinced it was bad for you. “Gives you headaches,” she said.
Makes you too big for your boots, all thon ideas,
she thought.

McAllister read the
Herald
first, glanced through the
Scotsman
next, read the headlines of the Aberdeen newspaper, and ignored the
Gazette
. He was on page five, reading the follow-up article to the front-page headline story written by Mary Ballantyne. Although there was no byline, he recognized her style, and was interested in, but not surprised by, the exposé of City Council corruption.

Joanne was sitting opposite him reading the
Gazette
. She glanced up at the headlines in the
Herald
. With her one-lens glasses she couldn't see clearly, but the headline jumped out at her. She squinted at the picture, but even with her weak vision, she recognized the man. “McAllister,” she whispered.

“Mm-hmm?” he replied.

“McAllister . . .” The color in her face, which had only just returned to her cheeks, had drained to a pale corpselike pallor.

“Joanne, what is it? Is it your eyes?”

“That man . . .” She pointed to the newspaper. “Don said it was all over . . .”

Her cup shattered on the tiled floor. Joanne slumped sideways. He raced to her, his chair clattering to the floor, gripping her under the arms. “Here, put your head on the table. I've got you. It's fine, I have you.”

“The newspaper, it's getting wet, it's . . .” She was reaching for the newspaper, trying to rescue it from the pool of spilt tea.

“What's happened?” Annie rushed in, still in her nightie.

“What's wrong?” His mother was in the doorway, bringing with her the scent of warm bread.

“What have you done to her this time?” Granny Ross had
come in the front door, having forgotten this was McAllister's late morning.

“Annie, call the doctor.” The grannies he ignored. “Here, my love, let's get you onto the sofa. Can you stand? Here, lean on me.”

They stumbled into the sitting room. She lay down. Annie came back. “The doctor will be fifteen minutes.”

She came over, sat beside her mother, calm, scared, in charge. “McAllister, bring the pills from the kitchen dresser. And water.”

“Are you sure?” An almost-twelve-year-old had more presence of mind than himself, and he did as he was told.

The grannies were at the kitchen table, cleaning up the spilt tea, picking up the shattered teacup. They looked up as he came in. He saw how old they were, and how frightened.

“She's had a turn, she's tired that's all.” He knew that to be untrue; something she saw in the newspaper had shocked her. What, he didn't know. But he would find out. He reached for the bottle of pills, then poured a glass of water. Remembering the
Herald,
he quickly folded it, putting it in the dresser drawer. “Don't worry. The doctor will be here soon.”

When her son had gone, Mrs. McAllister went to the stove and lifted the kettle. “Tea, Elsie?” she asked.

“That'd be grand,” came the reply from Mrs. Ross. They nodded at each other. Truce.

The doorbell rang. Annie answered, saying, “Hello, Dr. Matheson, you were quick.” She showed him into the sitting room and at a glance from McAllister she left.

Annie went to the kitchen. “Mum's fine. She just fainted,” she said. Then she went upstairs, because she felt like crying and didn't want anyone to see her.

After the doctor left, and after Joanne went to bed to sleep, and after his mother left with Granny Ross to visit her house, he telephoned the
Gazette
and spoke briefly to Don McLeod.

“Buy the
Herald
,” he told his deputy, “and when you've read it, come over to my house. I want an explanation.” He hung up without the usual courtesies. For the next half hour he read and reread the article and was none the wiser.

When Don arrived he was faced with a man he did not recognize, a man in such a fury Don was afraid the editor might have a heart attack.

“This”—he was holding up a tea-stained, crumpled newspaper—“something about this picture or headline made Joanne faint in shock.”

“Is she a' right?”

“No, she's not. But the doctor gave her a sedative, and she's asleep.” His hand and the pages and his knee were shaking. He had shut the sitting room door, not wanting the children and Joanne and whoever else might appear to overhear the conversation.

“Joanne's read it?” Don asked.

“No. It was the picture. She recognized the man.” He tapped the front page with his finger, but there was no need, Don had already seen it.

“It was a couple of years ago . . .” Don began.

“A couple of years ago? So I was here?” He was staring at Don, doing his best to suppress his anger. But the fierceness in his eyes and the tap of his fingers on the newspaper made it clear; he was furious.

“Aye. But you'd only been here—maybe nearly a year . . .” The deputy editor didn't know how to lessen the guilt he was feeling. Not at deceiving McAllister—they had not known him well at that time, but he needed to lessen his own guilt, his sense that by not connecting the past with the present, he had let Joanne down.

“If you knew, and Jimmy . . . ?” A thought hit him. “So Jenny must have known about whatever it was and that's why she asked me to help Jimmy.” He was shaking his head. “So something went
down up here in the Highlands, no one told me, and I'm expected to clear it up for you? So heaven's sakes! Tell me!”

Don couldn't look at him. The accusation was fair. As calmly as he could he lit another cigarette from the glowing butt of the previous one and started. “It was a while ago, all sorted out and . . .”

“How was Joanne involved? And Jimmy?”

“He was the one who fixed it.” Don didn't add,
At my request.
“It all started with Bill Ross . . .” Then he stopped. If he involved Joanne's former husband, he guessed that McAllister might find him, and violence would follow. “Look, I'm not at all sure there's a connection with recent events.”

“What happened?” McAllister asked as though the words were in capital letters. “How does Joanne know this man? Why did she faint at the sight of his picture?” The sense of betrayal was what hurt the most. The sense he had been kept in the dark. And used. “People have died. I've put my mother and myself at risk—and Jimmy said nothing. And you, I thought we were friends but . . .”

McAllister began pacing, wearing a path from fireplace to bookcase on the already threadbare Turkish carpet. “I want to hear everything, because if I later find out you've deceived me . . .”

Don let the threat go. He could understand that McAllister might feel betrayed and had a fleeting thought that perhaps one of Joanne's calm pills might be needed. “Sit down, man. I canny talk when you're all over the place like a madwoman's custard.”

McAllister sat. The fury had drained him, too drained to even offer a dram, or take one himself. He smoked throughout the time it took for Don to explain. As did Don. Although the front door opened and closed twice, no one interrupted.

“It was Bill Ross. His business was in trouble. He borrowed from a loan shark who was new to town, and trying to set up shop here. Then Bill Ross couldn't pay the loan back—one o'
those compound interest scams. These men, they came after him. They threatened Joanne, and the girls. And she told me.”

He took a deep breath. That time, when Joanne was at her most vulnerable, when she regularly had to hide the bruises, to hide what was happening to her and her children, when friends and family knew but did nothing, Don had not intervened. He had not supported her because, like most people of this time and place, he saw it as horrible, but not unusual, something women had to bear, separation and divorce being completely unacceptable.
Till death us do part
, he knew that was, is, what everyone believes.

“Then it turned out these people, men, wanted more than Bill Ross's debt, they wanted his building business. What with all the new road building contracts, a new bridge, and council housing schemes, there's a lot to be made up here in the Highlands, if you're in the building trade. These people from Glasgow, that's their trade, amongst other things—not that we knew that at the time—and this was a way to expand their business. I told Jimmy. He knew them, said he'd had dealings with them in the past. He never told me the details. He saw them off. And as far as I know, Bill Ross's debt was never repaid.”

That was the bare bones of it. Don couldn't bear to remember how terrified Joanne had been, how crushed by domestic violence. When it was over, when she began to make a life for herself in her wee prefab house, earning her own living, taking care of her children without the shadow of violence, he'd watched her change, blossom into the beautiful confident woman she was, until once again attacked, this last time by a violently insane woman. In Don's estimation, apart from the physical injuries, the last attack was easier to recover from than the long insidious undermining violence of a husband ready to settle any perceived slight with his hands.

“How much was the debt?”

“A thousand pounds.”

“That's a fortune!”

“It is.”

“And where is Bill Ross?” McAllister asked.

“I'm no' sure,” Don replied.

“Betsy, his new wife, is still in town. I saw her last week.”

“Aye, but what with a new baby an' all, Bill Ross was planning to leave for Australia first, to start work, find a house, and she's joining him when he's settled.”

“Granny Ross hasn't mentioned it.” McAllister now understood the woman's heartache, but that didn't excuse her son. “And if Bill Ross has gone, he didn't bother to say goodbye to his daughters.”

Don McLeod shrugged. He thought so little of Joanne's former husband, that didn't surprise him.

“So with Jimmy stymieing a lucrative link between the building business in Glasgow and potential new contracts up here . . .”

“And Jimmy showing the man up in front o' his brothers . . .” Don thought loss of face was a much more likely cause for revenge.

McAllister stubbed out a cigarette. His mouth felt raw and dry, and he was weary of the whole drama. “Will you call Mary from the office?” he asked. “Fill her in. It's hard to make a private phone call here.” It was another matter about sharing a house that frustrated him; any other reason for not calling Mary himself he could not admit to.

• • •

It was mid-afternoon when Joanne came into the sitting room. “I'm sorry about today.”

He hadn't heard her; he was writing in a notebook, trying to decide which recording of Sidney Bechet he would order from
the stockists in London, anything to stop himself agonizing over the perceived betrayal by Don and Jenny McPhee. And Jimmy. When he looked up and saw her, as insubstantial as a wraith half glimpsed across a lochan in the gloaming, McAllister felt sick.

“Don told me what happened between Bill Ross and that man. You have every reason to be upset.” He could not use the word
husband
. Even
ex-husband
was too intimate.

“So have you.”

She took the armchair on the other side of the empty fireplace, opposite him. She took a deep breath, and the scent of the pinecones in the empty grate, pinecones she and the girls had collected from the forest around Craig Padraig, the ancient vitrified fort on the eastern flanks of the town, filled her with the memory of shadows and sunbeams piercing the gloom of the dense woodland, and the dark scent of the sticky pine secretions she loved to pick off and roll into balls, staining her fingers, and the shouts and laughter from the children echoing around the bowl of the fort. The memory tugged at the corners of her mouth and she smiled.

It was quiet. She had the unpleasant feeling of having slept too much. She had a metallic taste in her mouth of the pills the doctor insisted she take. “Something to help you sleep.” She'd agreed, even knowing how much she hated the woozy after-feeling. But sleep was preferable to the terrors swirling around her brain.