A Double Death on the Black Isle Page 15

  “Flora, there’s no use looking westward,” Joanne muttered as she passed the plinth. “He’s long gone, like most of them. And he was never there when you needed him, like most of them.”

  The scudding clouds held a threat of rain. Capricious late-spring weather as always. She pulled her coat tight, remembering the old adage, “Ner’e cast a cloot till May is oot.”

  Joanne felt guilty whenever she thought of her girls. How could she work full-time, yet give them the attention they needed? Annie had retreated into her books. Wee Jean was clinging. They had to be forced to go to Sunday school. They were no longer happy to go with their grandparents on the Sunday walk.

  “We want to stay at home,” they said.

  “We can play in the garden,” they said.

  “We don’t want to go anywhere,” they said.

  “You’ll miss your Sunday ice cream,” Joanne told them.

  Even that failed to change their minds.

  “I have no idea what to do,” she said to the passing seagulls. “They are not happy children.”

  Her words flew west on the wind and she turned her gaze back to the river. On the opposite bank, the new green of the trees and hedges shimmered with a color almost unnatural in its virulence. Beyond the town the gorse and broom, undistinguishable at this distance, made a strip of bright yellow delineating the canal banks. The asylum, crouching in the hills above the town, seemingly closer in the moisture-laden air, was as constant a reminder as the graveyard of Tomnahurich. A reminder of what, Joanne asked herself. Of folly, she concluded.

  McAllister is right, Joanne told herself over and over. The job will solve most of my problems, or at least give me an alternative to going back to my husband, my prison. But this newspaper game—I’m not sure I’ll ever get the hang of it.

  Various bells went off for the three-quarter-hour mark, all a few seconds off from one another.

  Joanne gave one last look at the river, took a deep lungful of oxygen to fortify her against the smoke in the reporters’ room, and—hair flying, brain no clearer—she strode off down the hill to the challenge of being Joanne Ross, reporter, the Highland Gazette.

  FOURTEEN

  Rob left not long after dawn to drive the seventy miles down the Great Glen to meet Graham Nicolson at his shop in Fort William. McAllister had approved the trip, but told Rob he would have to ask Mrs. Smart to sign the expenses chit.

  “I’m taking my motorbike, so it’s the same cost as a trunk call,” Rob told her. That did the trick.

  Arriving at Graham Nicolson’s newsagent’s shop, Rob stretched his legs and studied the sky before going in. For once, it wasn’t raining. As he went inside, the door gave off a ping, and a man bearing a close resemblance to a shaggy, Highland cow appeared.

  “Mr. Nicolson? Rob McLean.”

  “Another great edition this week,” Graham Nicolson said after they shook hands. “The new Gazette is getting a lot of attention hereabouts.”

  “Let’s hope we can come up with another good story for next week.”

  “Aye,” Mr. Nicolson agreed. “I told the fisher lads we’d meet at nine o’clock. Then we’ll go straight to the boatyard in Mallaig. I think the journey will be worth your while.”

  The idea of taking the “Road to the Isles,” as the journey to Mallaig was called, appealed to Rob. It passed by lochs and glens and the landing place of Bonnie Prince Charlie—places etched deep in the mind of every Scotsman.

  “Great,” Rob said when he saw the workmanlike café, “I need a big breakfast after the ride along the Great Glen.”

  Although it was not an Italian café, it was the type of café that Rob loved—one that served another of Scotland’s national dishes, bacon rolls.

  There were the usual chipped Formica tables, mismatched chairs, steamed-up windows, a pie display, and a tea urn. Nothing fresh whatsoever on the menu except eggs, and they were fried in lard to kill off any goodness.

  “Two bacon rolls, with extra bacon and a mug of tea,” Rob ordered.

  Mr. Nicolson put three heaped teaspoons of sugar in his tea and looked around. He noted a pleasing number of the customers engrossed in the Gazette.

  “There’s almost too much to take in, in this week’s paper,” Mr. Nicolson said. “I saw from your article that no one’s been charged with setting fire to the boat.”

  “Apart from the anonymous call Joanne received, no one is any the wiser—except Sandy Skinner.”

  “Well, he’ll no be telling,” Mr. Nicolson said. They laughed. “The boys from The Good Shepphard just want their money. Sandy Skinner commissioned a very expensive trawler. It is almost finished and payments are well overdue. The boatbuilder could go bankrupt. With all the job losses that would mean, it’s a big story over here in the west.”

  Rob could see the headline—“Boatbuilder Goes Bust.”

  “I was wondering,” Mr. Nicolson continued, “does his widow become liable? I wouldn’t know the law on that.”

  “I could ask my father,” Rob replied, “but he’ll say, ‘It all depends.’ That’s what he says when I ask him a legal question.”

  The brothers from The Good Sheppard came into the café, spotted Rob, and came over to join them.

  Rob had a problem keeping a straight face. He was an avid reader of American pulp fiction, sci-fi books—a pilot at the Lossiemouth Air Base had given him about twelve or so magazines. His favorite plot was about babies cultured in test tubes, every child the same, hundred of children all exactly the same. Maybe they do something similar on the west coast, Rob was thinking, and these boys are from the same batch.

  “Rob,” Graham Nicolson nudged Rob with his elbow.

  “Sorry. I was in a dwam.” Rob came back to 1957, Highlands of Scotland, Planet Earth.

  After their tea arrived, first one brother, then the next, contributed to the tale of the unpaid wages. Rob scribbled notes as they talked.

  “The skipper said he was short on money,” one said, “and asked could we wait until after the next trip. He told us it would be no problem, as after he was married, he’d be rolling in the money. We said yes ’cos we had no choice and it was to be the final trip anyhow.”

  “Sandy’s wife can pay, she’s rich,” his brother added.

  “I wouldn’t bank on getting the money out of Sandy’s widow,” Rob told them. “What I don’t understand is how did Sandy Skinner find you, and why did he hire you?”

  “The boatbuilder put us in touch. He knows our father and knew we were between crews, so when Sandy was asking if there were anyone looking for a berth, the man told him about us.”

  “What happened to the original crew of The Good Shepphard?”

  “Sandy never said, but we heard the crew was his uncle and brother and he had a big falling out wi’ his family.”

  “He was barred from tying up in his home port, barred from landing his catch there an’ all,” the second brother—younger or older, Rob couldn’t tell—told them. “Another thing is, we’re no holy rollers like them, we don’t mind fishing on a Sunday. That was one of the reasons for the fight wi’ his family. None of them will fish on the Sabbath.”

  “I believe Sandy’s family are Brethren and very strict,” Graham Nicolson said.

  “We did a few trips around the Minch,” the boys continued, “but Sandy didney know the waters, so we fished the North Sea, his home grounds. . . .”

  “Aye,” the second brother said. “We got good catches, but we had to go through the canal locks and the lochs to get the fish to market. . . .”

  “Then, on the last trip, the boat burned down. But you know that.”

  They both looked at Rob. “Aye, you went into the water same as the boat.” The boys were grinning at the memory of Rob struggling in the canal.

  He didn’t need reminding, but he was a good sport and it was funny in hindsight. “Aye, you got the better of me,” he grinned back. “It was the last trip you said?”

  “Aye. We were to sell up the catch, then deli
ver the boat to the builder’s yard.”

  “Do either of you know who threw the petrol bomb?” Rob asked.

  “No, no idea.” The first brother shook his head. “But I’m pretty sure the skipper knew.”

  The second brother nodded in agreement.

  The fishermen waved as they left the café. Graham went to his shop to fetch the car saying, “Thanks all the same, Rob, but I’d no feel safe on the back o’ a bike.”

  He gave Rob directions, and they agreed to meet at the boatbuilder’s yard in Mallaig.

  Rob followed the side of the sea loch to the turnoff to Mallaig, then sped off along Loch Eil and over the pass to Glen-finnan. Every mile of the forty-six miles of the “Road to the Isles” was spectacular.

  “Over here,” Rob waved as he saw Graham Nicolson’s Morris Traveller pull in. Even with Rob’s stop at the monument, he had been waiting a good half hour for his guide to catch up.

  The boatyard was busy. Saturdays are obviously a full working day hereabouts, Rob thought.

  “How are you, Mr. Nicolson?” A man wearing a carpenter’s leather apron came out from behind a storage shed to greet them.

  “This here’s Rob McLean from the Highland Gazette.” Graham made the introductions.

  “John Andrews. Pleased to meet you.”

  The man’s hands were like sandpaper, Rob thought.

  “I’m no one to go to a newspaper wi’ my business affairs,” Mr. Andrews told them, “but Heaven only knows how I’ll get paid now Sandy Skinner is dead. I wouldn’t mind you writing a wee bit hinting that a new owner could rescue the business. Save jobs.”

  “Is that the boat?” Rob looked up at an almost finished trawler resting in its—no, her, Rob corrected himself—cradle and, to his eye, she looked magnificent.

  “Aye, it is. She was to be called The Good Shepphard II.”

  “She’s magnificent,” Rob said. “A pity Hec’s not here to take a picture.”

  “I brought my camera just in case,” Graham Nicolson said. “The Gazette has published my photos before, so I’m sure they’ll do the job.”

  When Rob asked, Mr. Andrews was reluctant to put an exact price on the deep-sea trawler.

  “It’ll cost what someone is prepared to pay,” he said, “no use putting a price on her yet.”

  Graham Nicolson and Rob said their good-byes in Mallaig. Rob was keen to get home. It was a long hundred miles back.

  “That’s a very bonnie boat indeed,” Mr. Nicolson pointed to her as they were leaving, “and she’ll be a very bonnie price.”

  “Thanks for everything,” and Rob took off.

  “I’ll send over the photos of the trawler first thing Monday,” Mr. Nicolson shouted over the noise of the motorbike.

  Rob tried whistling as he drove along Loch Lochy on the journey home. This is a good story, he was thinking. . . . Then there is the Munro death and the tinkers in jail, another good story.

  He was nearing Fort Augustus.

  The death of Sandy Skinner . . . maybe I should listen to my father, to Joanne, to the police—there is no evidence of anything other than a horrible accident. Convenient from the Ord Mackenzie point of view though.

  Rob drove slowly down to the foreshore with Fort Augustus Abbey on his right, the waters of Loch Ness before him. He parked the bike and stood on the shore, stretched, shook his legs and arms and hands to rid himself of the cramp before picking up half a dozen likely stones and skimming them across the waters of the loch. It was a game he loved. Joanne told him it was one of her favorite games too.

  Patricia Ord Mackenzie now Skinner, was she legally liable for her late husband’s debts? Would she feel she had a moral obligation to pay the fishermen? Rob couldn’t shake the thoughts of the story. When he was onto an idea, he became almost obsessed.

  What really happened to Sandy Skinner? I suppose we’ll have to wait for the fatal accident inquiry to decide.

  In the meantime, no harm in having a poke around, he told himself.

  Rob was unusual amongst his friends. He hadn’t gone to university, doing a cadetship on the Gazette instead. Not that he had many friends in the town; the boys who were his companions from childhood and school days were nearly all gone, gone to university, to jobs in the big cities, to another life in other places—as had his girlfriend, Bianca.

  It’s been months since I saw her, he realized. I wonder if she is still my girlfriend?

  Rob enjoyed spending time with older people like McAllister and Joanne and his mother. He enjoyed the company of eccentrics—even Hector was proving to be interesting. But Beech, a man in his seventies, intrigued him most.

  “Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle,” Rob said the name out loud and laughed. “I like your style.”

  He walked back to the bike.

  “Another year,” he muttered to himself as he pulled on his gloves, did up his old Flying Corps leather hat, and wrapped his scarf around twice. “Two at the most. Then I’ll be off south.”

  Rob had always known, from when he was eight and realized people were paid to write stories, that one day he was going to be somebody. He never put the thought into words, for fear of jinxing his chances.

  He started up the bike, loving the sound and the feel of the engine, loving the idea of himself as this fancy-free young reporter with a future in the big, wide world outside of the Highlands.

  At the end of Loch Ness, on the final miles into town, dusk was reaching up to dim the last of the light on the wooded hilltops. In town, streetlights were on. Rob was undecided where to go. He had nowhere he needed to be. No one he could think of to meet. He would love to pop round to Joanne’s house and chat and laugh and play with the girls, then tell her, in exaggerated detail, about his trip to the west.

  No, Rob thought, not a good idea. The last time I went there, Joanne had ended up in hospital. He did not realize. She hid it well. She was keeping her distance because she was ashamed.

  Looking for an audience, Rob made for the Market Bar. It was a racing certainty that Don would be there this time in the evening. Don McLeod loved stories about boats and he would love the description of the trawler. One thing is sure, Rob thought, I can make facetious comments about death and coincidences without fear of falling out with Don. But Don wasn’t there.

  As Rob came into the driveway, he smiled to himself; Saturday night at home with his mother—this did not at all fit his self-portrait of an up-and-coming journalist with a future.

  “Jimmy McPhee called,” his mother told him. “He said he’d call back.”

  And he did, not five minutes later.

  “I hear you wanted a word,” Jimmy said.

  They agreed to meet at twelve the next day, “But no on the Black Isle,” Jimmy told Rob. “We’re no very popular there the now.”

  Jimmy was already in the Beauly Hotel when Rob walked in.

  Beauly was a large village or a very small town—depending on whether you came from there or not. The square was bordered by the main road north on one side and solid, respectable buildings, constructed in equally respectable grey stone on the other. An occasional turret broke up the no-frills façades.

  The hotel bar reflected the town: solid wooden furnishings, from circa 1880, heavy, gilt-framed mirrors, and a clientele almost all dressed in tweed—tweed jackets, tweed knickerbockers, and tweed to-and-fro caps with a tuft of pheasant feather or perhaps an elaborate fishing lure stuck in the hatband.

  It was not a bar for a tinker, but no one dared ask Jimmy McPhee to leave.

  Rob saw him and waved and mimed a drink. Jimmy held up a whisky glass. As Rob waited, he realized he was glad to be in the company of Jimmy McPhee. Jimmy was not an eccentric, but there was something irrepressible about the man.

  Rob McLean was the well-educated only son of a respected solicitor. Jimmy McPhee was the second son, born into the aristocracy of Travelers, who had only sporadic schooling while traveling the roads of Scotland, in the army, and in prison.

  The oldest McPhee broth
er, Keith, had abdicated in favor of a life of study. He had finished school, and was accepted by Glasgow University—to the great glee of his brother. Not because Jimmy wanted to inherit the mantle of unofficial chieftain of the clan, but more because he could gloat that a tinker could make it to university.

  Sitting himself down at Jimmy’s table, Rob felt the ripple of murmurs. The son of Angus McLean at the same table as the son of Jenny McPhee would be the talk of the community. That they should meet, talk, joke, was another reason Rob loved working on the Highland Gazette.

  “Slainthe mhath,” Rob held up his shandy. “Thanks for agreeing to meet.”

  “I’ll help if I can. I owe your editor. As I said, I canny talk about the details of ma brothers’ trial . . . unless you have any information to help them.”

  “I’m looking for information on the Skinner family.”

  “I know little about they fishermen,” Jimmy shrugged. “A tight, closed bunch they are. Look after their own.”

  “Like your lot then,” Rob remarked.

  “Aye. You’re right, and you’ll never catch a tinker at sea. River fishermen and pearlers, we are. Poachers an’ all.”

  “I know it’s not relevant, but I’m really curious as to how Patricia Ord Mackenzie met Sandy Skinner and why on earth did she marry him?” Rob asked.

  Jimmy gave his full beam Jimmy grin, making him look like a naughty boy, not a legendary hard man.

  “The why is obvious by now,” he laughed. “I heard that she was havin’ a bit o’ hochmagandy wi’ Sandy for many a year. How they met? I’m no sure, but Sandy Skinner used to pal around wi’ Fraser Munro. After all, they were in the same class at school, from five-year-olds to leaving. Right troublemakers they were.”

  “Really?”

  “Ask the schoolmaster. He was always reaching for his belt wi’ those two.” Jimmy paused, “I’m no sure, I’ll check wi’ Ma, but I seem to remember Sandy coming to Achnafern a time or two to work at the tatties. It wasn’t unusual for a fisherman’s lad to work the harvest, there’s good money at tattie picking. Great company too—farm workers, tinkers, loads o’ young folk, from the town even—we all work thegether, have a bit o’ a laugh at day’s end. Making a fire, roasting tatties in the embers, a song or two. Patricia loved it. Always managed to wangle a holiday from thon posh school o’ hers at tattie harvest. And she worked as hard as anyone.”