Eight-thirty-November-morning light was only one or two notches up from dark. Four-thirty in the afternoon and dark would return, leaving the counties of the north shut in under an immense blackout curtain. The MacLean household was lit up like the Titanic. Rob felt the need for brightness before tackling his morning. Digging with gusto into the full Scottish breakfast of eggs, bacon, black pudding, white pudding, tattie scones and toast with homemade whisky marmalade, Rob greeted his father with a full mouth, a grunt and a gesture toward the frying pan.
“If you’re offering, then yes.”
His father had just come back from his morning constitutional. His face glowed in the heat of the kitchen.
“So, to what do we owe this banquet? A promotion? An engagement? Last request before the scaffold?”
“I felt like cooking,” Rob explained. “I’ll be going into work later but first I’ve an interview next door with Father Morrison. He’s off to a new job down south.”
“Mr. McAllister put you up to this?”
“No, it was my idea.” Rob was pleased with himself.
His father looked over his spectacles at his son. He was confident in his boy but uneasy just the same. Rob caught his father’s frown and was grateful.
“Don’t worry, if he turns obstreperous, I’ll yell for Mum. That’ll put the fear of God in him.”
“A fear of God appears to be distinctly lacking in this case.”
“Dad, you surely don’t agree with McAllister’s wild theories?”
“No, I don’t. It is an impossible thought.” He hesitated. “All the same, call me when you’re finished.”
The doorstep of the Big House took up more space than most people’s kitchens, Rob reflected, and the house was as welcoming as a vault. Hand poised on the bell, the realization that this was the last place wee Jamie had been seen alive chilled him. Ridiculous. McAllister had two and two making thirty-nine. Rubber footsteps came squelching down the linoleum in the hallway.
“Here we go.” Rob prepared a Cheshire cat smile.
Father Morrison filled the doorway, cheeerful as ever. “Come in, come in. A dreich day. At least you didn’t have far to walk.”
Rob followed him into the sitting room, where a freshly lit fire was struggling to stay alight against the frequent blowbacks. A dim overhead light, with a parchment-colored shade, sent out a watery custard light.
The house and the room were far different from Rob’s childhood memories of when his grandparents lived here. Ornate sideboards, bookcases and a desk were still in situ—too large to move. Some of the original carpets and runners had also been left behind—too old to matter. What was different was the general air of shabbiness and the faint institutional smell of boiled cabbage and disinfectant. Close up, the priest too had an institutional tinge; boiled-tattie complexion, musty soutane and a home haircut. He was big, granted, but frightening? No. Up until now, Rob had always thought of Father Morrison as a nice man—if he thought of him at all. Now, in his newfound role of investigative journalist, he furtively examined the man. He searched for the right word. Gone to seed, like a former sportsman down on his luck; that was it. That is how he would describe him—if Don didn’t cut it out.
Exactly one hour later Rob scurried down the driveway, turned left to his own house, walked through to the kitchen and dropped into a chair.
“That didn’t take long.” Margaret was ironing. Rob sat silent. She made tea. She let him be. Waited. Elbows on the well-scrubbed, well-worn table, he cradled the cup, taking slow sips.
“Mum, you know I love you.”
Margaret was shocked. A normal Highlander did not say such things beyond the age of six.
“My dear Robbie. Tell me about it.”
Shaken, embarrassed, a wee boy again, he told her.
“I don’t know what to say.” She started. But she did. “Rob, we have always taught you to believe in goodness and in kindness and honesty. So we must suppose that the reverse exists. Look at what’s happened and is happening in Europe. Your father and I went through two wars. We know evil exists. I try not to see it, but it is there, in big and small ways. And always balanced by good.”
Rob nodded.
“This morning, in Grandma McLean’s old house, for me a happy house, I felt something that made me feel sick.” He looked up at her. “The trouble is, well, it was nothing really. It just gave me the creeps, that’s all.” He shook himself like a dog after a dip in a swamp. “I feel such a fool for overreacting.”
She listened, didn’t say much, just murmured reassurances. But Margaret was seething inside, feeling that her only child, her sunny boy, was losing his innocence.
Rob left for work, having told her a simple version of what had happened. Yes, Rob assured her, he was fine. And no, Margaret assured him, she wouldn’t say anything to his father about Rob being upset; she would just give him the facts. Then, after waving him and his motorbike out the gate, she called her husband. She didn’t know what to think. Rob assured her again that it was nothing. It was only some photos, he said. But her first reaction was the same as Rob’s; there was something unsavory about the obsession with young boys. Dozens of photos, Rob said, and sheets and sheets of negatives, all of boys.
She phoned her husband. She told him. Quickly, quietly, no drama in her voice, she related the bare facts. No need to worry, she said; it’s probably harmless, she said. She put down the phone, leaving Angus McLean to draw his own conclusions, to exercise his eminent sense of right and reason. She then went round the house locking every door, every window, closing curtains as though death had visited. She switched on every lamp in the house, banked up the fire and even then, she still felt chilled. She remembered. She could now see for herself how the idea had come about; a hoodie crow indeed. But the step between a distasteful hobby and the killing of a child, that was a step she could not contemplate.
Don walked into McAllister’s room, a cup of tea in one hand and the layout in the other.
“Am I interrupting?” He nodded to Jimmy McPhee.
“Yes,” McAllister told him.
Don was not in the least offended—he knew he would find out what was going on eventually.
“When you’re done here, a word?” he asked Jimmy.
“Aye, I’ll see you after,” Jimmy agreed.
McAllister closed his office door.
Jimmy McPhee went straight to the point.
“I didn’t tell you everything when you came to our place. But ma mother thinks you should know.” He left McAllister in no doubt that if he had had his way, this conversation would not be taking place.
He told his story straight, in his harsh, crackling voice, speaking in the local dialect with the local speech pattern of glottal stops and swallowed words and sentences spoken on an ingoing breath. He dropped in the occasional Glasgow swear word, picked up from his time on the boxing circuit.
McAllister kept his head down through most of the monologue, allowing Jimmy McPhee a private space to remember.
“We were at the berries one summer, in Blair, I was eleven, but small, still am, and runnin’ round, driving everyone daft. And I was always in fights.
“Ma, she had this notion to get at least one more of us educated and she had heard of a place in Glasgow where you could go to a good school for free if you were any good at sport an’ if you were poor. We definitely made it in on the poor bit, an’ I wasnae a bad boxer neither.”
Speaking with the ease of a natural storyteller, he told it as a tale from a distant past, a story that had happened to someone else.
“So there I was, a tough skinny wee tyke, boxing and training and trying to put on a bit of weight. We had some good instructors, fathers or brothers, mostly Irish, mostly fine fellows, tough but fair. And school, a boarding school it is, it wasn’t so bad. I could read and write a wee bit, but I was a dab hand at the numbers. Helps me work out the odds.” He grinned.
“But you know how, as bairns, you just know some things. Not much is said, you certainly don’t discuss it, and it’s just a word here, a curse there, a warning or two. So, it wasn’t long before I heard the talk about one of the fathers. Watch out for him, dirty old B, and they all laughed. But not as bad as that other manny, the one that was supposed to be a teacher, the one that left, said one of the boys. Aye, him, said another. I was right confused. The warnings, I had no idea what it was about, I thought it meant that some of them were a bit too rough in the ring, nothing I couldn’t deal with, me being tough an all. It was not like some of the stuff the boys from the orphanage had to put up with. That was a ferocious awful place.”
They simultaneously lit a cigarette.
“So not long after, I met this father they had warned me about. He was a big man a’ right. Cheerful, smiling, Glasgow through and through. I ended up on his dormitory wing. The boys were no scared o’ him, but they didn’t like him. Me, I couldn’t see the problem. He loved all his “innocent wee souls” as he put it. There were the photos, right enough, that was his hobby and he was a dab hand at it. He liked doing the private portraits as well as the usual group shots. You were in your boxing drawers and gloves and you did the poses. It all seemed harmless enough. He did harp on a bit about nasty wee boys with dirty habits. I’d no idea what he was on about.
“So all was fine, until you started changing—you know. Then, when we had the weekly bath night, it was—all scrubbed clean are we? I’d better check. That was the inspection to see if you were clean, everywhere. He’d peer in yer lugs, inspect yer fingernails and yer hair for nits, then, making a game of it, he would check your willie. Touch it. And he’d go on about keeping yerself clean in mind and body, about how filthy thoughts and filthy habits was how the devil got into you.
“Now, I’m a tinker an’ I was that wee bit tougher than those boys, but the real difference was this; I knew my brother would listen. Keith, fifteen and strong, wi’ a good heid on him, he’d help. So one day I told ma brother. It took me a while. The man was doing nothing wrong, not really. He was a decent fellow, mostly. We all liked him, sort of, but I knew it wasn’t right.”
Jimmy looked straight at McAllister and grinned. “Us tinkers are brought up with the stallions an’ mares, we know all about nature. This wasn’t natural. So, next thing I know, Ma comes down tae Glasgow to take me back to the Highlands. We’re off on the road for the summer, she said, needs my help with the horses, she said.”
He stopped, remembering. “Aye. And that’s no all she said. She said I was a grand lad.” He grinned again. A picture of his mother as she marched off to the office of the school’s headmaster came into his head. He never knew what was said. He had no need. He never doubted his mother’s capacity to put the fear of God or of the devil into anyone. And if that failed, Jenny McPhee would blast the culprit with a string of tinker curses—in Gaelic.
Jimmy wasn’t finished.
“What he did, see, Father Bain, was built you up when you were young, ’specially the ones who were good boxers, made you feel so proud, someone special, he was like a real father to the boys, and many of them had no one. Then as soon as you started to become a man, he made you feel like shite. So it was nothing really, he didn’t hurt you or harm you. There were others who were right sadists, and worse. No, he was one of the good ones. But he made you feel so dirty.”
Jimmy stopped. “That’s it. If it helps.”
It took some moments for McAllister to recover.
“Jimmy, this Father Bain, was he the man who took the photos of my brother?”
“Aye, the same.”
“And have you seen this man since then? Maybe up here, in the Highlands?”
“No, I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t recall bumping into any priest since I came back up north.”
“Jimmy, would you do something for me?”
Half an hour later, McAllister was still off in some distant void, but returned to the here and now by the clatter of Rob running up the stairs, banging around the reporters’ room, asking for the whereabouts of the editor. He roused himself and yelled out the door.
“In here!”
Rob blew in, still in his motorbike gear.
“So?”
“Well …” Spiral notebook in one hand, drawing pictures in the air with the other, Rob started to describe the interview with the priest.
“It was all very civilized, chummy really.”
McAllister took a second look at his junior reporter. For all his brave, look-at-me-I’m-grown-up air, the lad was shaken.
“Sit.”
Rob did as he was told, then started again.
“I asked about his past assignments. He told me; very proud of his boxing club and community work in Glasgow. But the war put an end to the boys’ club.”
McAllister stared. Then even before he heard what Rob had to tell him, he began to feel better; These shadows of coincidence, he thought, I’ve not imagined them.
“Next, he described his heroic service spent helping the bombed-out families in Dumbarton-shire. Then, after the armistice, he was running a church adoption and foster care agency that was also some kind of home. An administrative post, he says.”
“Involving children?” McAllister asked.
“Aye, all ages; babies, up to school-leaving age, orphans mostly. Then eight years ago he came here to the “retreat” next door to us. Only a few other people have stayed there as far as I know. He keeps himself to himself, never goes out much.
“So, all the while I was sooking up to him. You know, Father this and Father that and ‘Oh how interesting.’ He lapped it up. Then when I’d got my notes for the article, I decided to play a wee game so I could have a look around.
“‘Father Morrison,’ I says, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have your picture. Do you still have that big camera of yours? You could set it and I’ll push the button. I remember you being a dab hand with photos.’
“The silly old fool fell for it. Off he went to get his camera, me following behind. When he turned round and saw me in his studio, as he calls it, he didn’t look too pleased, but I turned up the charm a notch. Told him how professional it all looked. He switched on a big lamp, showed me the big professional camera on a tripod. He fiddled with his light meter, the settings, then showed me how to take the picture. He posed against a white sheet. Pleased as punch he was. Vain too, combing over the baldy bit on his head in that stupid old man’s way, you know, tramlines across his skull.
“Then I told him we didn’t have anyone to develop the film. Could he suggest anyone? And could we have it soon, as I wanted the piece in the next edition? And the fool, just like that, says, ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he says, ‘won’t take long,’ and did I mind waiting? Mind—I couldn’t have suggested better myself. ‘No problem,’ I said, ‘I’ll wait in the kitchen, write up my notes.’ Then off he went into the darkroom and I had the house to myself.”
Rob paused. “You know it used to be our house?”
McAllister nodded.
“Well, when Grandma McLean lived there, my cousins would come to stay and we played hide-and-seek or Swallows and Amazons or Sardines. It’s a big house, lots of cupboards and attics and the darkroom, that was once a dressing room, off what was my parents’ bedroom.
“So there I was, alone, and naturally, I had to have a poke around. I looked in the bedrooms; all empty except for his one. I checked his bedroom. A very large, very gory, very dead Jesus hanging above the bed gave me a bit of a fright. I checked the stuff on his table, his cupboards, his chest of drawers, and there, underneath his drawers, I found photos.”
Rob was so engrossed he didn’t even laugh at his own joke.
“There was a pile of them. Negatives, contact sheets, and lots of photos. Photos of boys. I stood like a stookie staring at the pictures. That was when Father Morrison called out he’d finished. I barely had time to put everything back.”
Rob stopped. He sniffed. He looked out the window, then continued.
“I made a big palaver of looking at the time, told him I was late for work, grabbed the photo of him by the corner, it was still wet, and said I had to go. I made for the door, blethering nonsense, and had to stop myself running down the drive, straight home.”
“Did you take any of those other pictures with you?” McAllister asked.
“I couldn’t. I knew he’d be on to me if I did.” Rob was miserable.
“But you have the photo of Father Morrison?”
“I gave it to Don.”
“We must take this to the police.” McAllister could feel the man slipping away again.
“How? There was nothing in the pictures really. They were just”—Rob searched for the words—“not nice. They were pictures of boys at the boxing and group shots and photos taken on excursions and stuff … but there were lots of pictures of boys in a big bath … you know … it was just that … the way they were posed, it made me feel … well, dirty.” Rob was staring at the carpet. “And I searched his drawers; that’s illegal. My dad would go spare if he found out.”
“Morrison would first have to make a complaint,” McAllister pointed out.
“I didn’t steal anything, but if we tell Inspector Tompson, he’s just as likely to arrest me. Attempted burglary or some such.”
“The chief inspector from Aberdeen, Westland’s his name, he’s in charge and he’s a dammed sight more on the ball than Inspector Plod. At least I hope he is.”
McAllister, looking out of the casement windows through rain that was now turning to sleet, remembering other photos, photos sitting on the mantelpiece shrine, his mother’s pride and joy, knew that there was too little, in fact none at all of the solid evidence needed to connect the priest to any crime. But that was not his job; he was a reporter, reporting the facts. He thought about his brother, his mother, Jamie, all the young lads who had been tainted and tarnished by men like Morrison, and he knew he couldn’t ignore what he suspected.
“I’ll get to the heart of this. No matter how long it takes me.”
And Rob, at the same time, in his own way, was making the same promise.
McAllister and Rob walked the very short walk to the police station. At the front desk, the editor asked for Detective Chief Inspector Westland. The desk sergeant told them he was out but would be back soon and invited them to go on up and wait.
A tall narrow window giving out onto the Castle Wynd dimly lighted the detectives’ lair, which lay off an equally narrow winding stairway. Handy for the courts, which were in the castle proper, but cramped with three desks, the door to the room was left permanently open to all the comings and goings on the stairs.
“Tompson will let Morrison know what I did. They’re in the same church,” Rob whispered. He was desperate to get out of this meeting.
Inspector Tompson appeared. He didn’t even greet them, just glared.
“What now?”
“We’re waiting for Westland.” McAllister was determined to ignore the inspector.
“Detective Chief Inspector Westland to you.” Tompson then poked a finger at Rob. “His time is too valuable to waste on speculation and innuendo from the press. Not to mention libel.”
McAllister, using his height and his formidable voice, stated, loud enough for everyone in the police station to hear, “I shall be letting the chief constable know that his officers are not interested in receiving information from the public. And furthermore, no more help will be forthcoming from the Gazette, not whilst I’m the editor.”
Halfway down the stairs, McAllister’s furious progress was halted as he ran into DCI Westland. Rob, at his heels, almost fell on top of the editor.
“I heard that.” The policeman held out his hand. “Would you care to come upstairs again and give me your information? In private?”
So they did, leaving nothing out.
Joanne had not seen Chiara for nearly a week. They arranged to meet during Joanne’s lunchtime break and have a sandwich at the coffee bar.
Gino waved as she came in, beamed at her, shouting a hello above the roar of the coffee machine, and pointed to where Chiara was waiting. The friends had this part of the café to themselves. No one mentioned it, but custom was still slow. There were some in the town who would always believe there was a link between the Italian family and the stranger awaiting trial for killing the child.
Stands to reason, some said, they’re all foreigners. Aye, others said, and I heard the Italian girl is engaged to that Polish man who is protecting thon murdering bastard.
And so it went.
“Long time no see.” Chiara smiled.
“There’s been so much happening.” Joanne smiled back.
“You look different.” Chiara examined her friend. “It’s not the hair. No new clothes—you’re still in that disgraceful old tweed jacket you love. So … your husband is away … is that it? Nope. A man? Ah hah! A hint of a blush. Tell me all.”
Joanne was laughing by this time. “You know, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’ve grown up.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“No, I mean that as a compliment.”
Their sandwiches and coffees arrived. Chiara thanked the waitress and when she was gone, they started the real conversation. Anyone watching would have seen two heads leaning close, one with raven black hair, the other bright brown. They would have noted an occasional touch to the arm, a hand placed on a friend’s hand. Anyone listening would have heard a constant murmur coming from one, and exclamations of “Never!” or “Get away!” or “Oh my goodness!” and muffled bursts of laughter and moments of quiet and a final “You never!” coming from the black-haired woman before they hugged, then ate their sandwiches and drank their cold coffee.
“Look at the time.” Joanne was up and grabbing her scarf and hat.
“Please say you’ll come.” Chiara, pleased again.
“I don’t see how I could manage it.”
“Ask McAllister for a lift. He’d never refuse you.”
Joanne gave Chiara a mock punch and tried to get out the door before her friend could see the light in her eyes.
“Friday night then?” Chiara called after her. “And if you don’t ask him, I will.”
Joanne sat in the visitor’s chair in McAllister’s office. Then stood up. She offered to make tea. He refused. She looked at him. He stared back. She started, her tone formal sounding.
“I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know where to begin. McAllister, I’m determined to make something of my life. I know, I know, hard for a woman, especially in this place, in these times, but I will.” She took a deep breath. “Can I have a full-time job?”
He looked surprised. Then nodded.
“Can I have a raise?” Again he nodded.
“Thank you. I suppose you want an explanation?”
He shrugged.
“Thank you so much,” was all she could manage to say. She stood.
“One thing more …” She hesitated. “Would you take me to a dance in Strathpeffer on Friday night?”
It had come out all wrong, she realized that, but before she could clarify the request, McAllister smiled at her and asked, “Are you asking me for a date, Mrs. Ross?”
“No, never, I mean, no.” Chiara had that wrong, she thought, I can’t be grown-up if I keep blushing all the time. “No, what I meant was … Rob has got this band—”
“So I heard.”
“And Peter Kowalski plays guitar and there’s a drummer and someone else and they’re playing at a party to celebrate Keith McPhee marrying Shona Stuart. So Chiara wants us to go. To support Peter.” She dared a look and he seemed interested. “So I thought maybe you could give me a lift and we could all have some fun, because it’s all been so serious lately.”
“I think that’s a fine idea. I’ll be happy to take you.”
And he watched as she fairly skipped out of the room.
“I hear we’re going to a party.”
“Aye.” McAllister continued to work without looking up.
“For heaven’s sake! Make an effort, man!” Don stalked back to the reporters’ table.
McAllister was there ten seconds later.
“Sorry. I’ll explain, but not now. How about supper, my place, tonight?”
“I’ll bring a bottle.”
McAllister was gratified when Don asked for seconds. The cock-a-leekie soup was his culinary magnum opus. And the tattie scones were not bad either. But he’d cheated and bought those at the bakery.
“So,” Don said as they stretched out either side of the fireplace, feet on the brass fender. “Might as well tell me because otherwise I’ll have to find a way to get rid of you.” He waggled his glass at the editor. “You’re no much company at all these days.”
“You showed the photo to Jimmy?”
“Aye, you were right, it’s the same man. That must make you feel vindicated.”
“No, I feel strangely flat. I thought I would feel triumphant—to be proved right on a matter that has haunted me for years—but, no. Until we know who killed the boy, I won’t be celebrating the fact that I was right.”
“Taking smutty pictures doesn’t make him a murderer. Even Jimmy doubts he would do that.” Don spoke slowly. “Then there’s the matter of getting hold of some of the photos Rob saw, to support your theory. We’re back to the same problem; who would listen to wee girls, or the lad or to Jimmy McPhee, against the word of a priest?”
He looked across at McAllister. McAllister sank in his chair, defeat showing in every part of his body.
“Killing the boy,” Don continued, “frankly, I don’t see it, unless it was an accident. What does Jimmy say?”
“He doesn’t believe Morrison, or Bain, as he knew him, would interfere with a child, far less kill him. He told me he was one of the better ones at that school he went to. There were others far worse is what he told me.”
“And DCI Westland?”
“I don’t know. He listened. He’d already talked to Morrison. He couldn’t find anything amiss. He noted what he called an innocuous collection of photos of junior boxing groups. He also told me that he is convinced Tompson arrested the right man. The case against the Pole is circumstantial, but his greatcoat being found on the banks of the canal clinches it for him. The procurator believes he can get a conviction.”
“I know you won’t thank me for saying this,” Don went on, “but it’s still all speculation on your part. And, as I said, it’s only photos, lots worse has happened. You know that, you having been a war correspondent. But cheer up, he’ll be out of our lives by Christmas.”
“Aye. And what havoc will he wreak on other boys’ lives?”
“That’s just the way it is, John, it’s just the way it is.”