A Double Death on the Black Isle Read online

  “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you were up to it,” McAllister was impatient with Joanne’s lack of self-belief, “and don’t forget, with Don McLeod as subeditor, most of what you think is your best writing will be cut by that ruthless red pencil of his. So, get the sequence clear in your head, then don’t think too much, just write.”

  As Joanne left the editor’s office to cross the four steps to the reporters’ room, she hugged herself.

  “My first real story,” she muttered, “my first front page.”

  Hector Bain, part boy, part man, part troglodyte, with a more than passing resemblance to Oor Wullie, that well-loved cartoon character from a Scottish Sunday newspaper, trudged through the promise of a spring morning. In a land where winter was said to reign for eight and a half months of the year, brisk would best describe the weather.

  Such an innocuous word, “weather,” a word that only a native of the Highlands would use to describe the cloud-scudding, bone-crushing, ear-piercing, gusty wind that blew straight from the North Sea, down the Firth, down the Great Glen, over a succession of lochs, where it met the gales of another wind that arrived, unencumbered, three thousand miles from the wastes of Labrador. Locals would call these half hourly blasts of horizontal rain “showers” and outsiders would describe them as a “deluge.”

  Not that Hector noticed. Trotting through the town, smiling at acquaintances, grinning at contemporaries, answering inquiries about the health of his granny with, “She’s great,” or, “She’s brilliant,” or, “She’s grand, thanks,” up the steep cobbled wynd that clung to the lee of the castle, head down and coat held tight to protect his precious cameras. A right turn—he arrived at his destiny. Only the semi-spiral stone staircase in the tall, narrow building to climb and he would be there in the sacred lair, there in the reporter’s room, the heartbeat of the Highland Gazette.

  “Cripes, it’s Oor Wullie!” Don McLeod said.

  “No it’s not. It’s a gnome from my mother-in-law’s rockery.” This came from Joanne.

  “You’re both wrong. It’s Horrible Hector,” Rob declared with an uncharacteristic scowl. Addressing the cocky figure standing expectantly in the doorway he asked, “So, Wee Hec, what the heck are you doing here?”

  The apparition stepped into the room proper.

  “Hiya Rob. What like?”

  At five foot two inches short, wearing clothes for an eleven-year-old and with two cameras round his neck, he looked like a wee boy dressed up as a photographer for Halloween. But the cameras round his neck were serious. Together, their net worth would buy a motorcar.

  His red, sticking-up hair and his turnip lantern grin gave Don the Oor Wullie joke, but, so far as anyone knew, the cartoon character didn’t have the orange freckles with matching sodium light hair.

  Joanne’s guess at garden gnome came from the lime green knitted woolen tourie—far too big for Hector’s head and weighted down to one side by an enormous bobble. A black and white Clachnacuddin Football Club supporter’s scarf completed the outfit. Hat and scarf had been knitted by his granny who could never find her glasses, and it showed.

  Still grinning at the threesome sitting around the reporters’ table, Hec waited. When it became obvious that neither Don nor Rob were going to introduce him, Joanne spoke.

  “We weren’t formally introduced yesterday. I’m Joanne Ross, I’m a reporter here. This is Don McLeod, deputy editor. You know Rob.”

  “I know.” Hector continued grinning until Joanne decided this was the natural state of his face.

  “So,” Joanne asked since her colleagues continued to ignore the apparition, “what can I do for you?”

  “It’s more a case of what I can do for you, Joanne.”

  “Mrs. Ross to you, boy,” Don growled at the newcomer.

  “Here’s ma card.”

  He handed the offering to Joanne. She peered at a hand-cut, hand-printed rectangle of cardboard the color of spam.

  “Hector Bain. Photographer. The Highland Gazette.”

  Rob reached over the shared desk and snatched the card from her.

  “Did you use your wee sister’s printing set?”

  “Highland Gazette? What’s this about?” Don’s frown made the lines on his fifty-maybe-sixty-something-old face resemble a relief map of his native Skye.

  “Morning. I see you’ve met our new photographer.” McAllister stood in the doorway, enjoying the consternation.

  “Him? We’re to work with him?” Rob poked a finger at Hector.

  “I’ve heard of some daft things in my time, but this takes the biscuit,” Don McLeod told the editor.

  McAllister shrugged. “You asked for a photographer. I got you a photographer.”

  “Aye, but what else is he besides?” Don replied. “I know you’re keen to get the new Gazette launched, and yes we’re desperate for a photographer, but not that desperate.” He narrowed his eyes, squinting through the smoke of his fifth cigarette of the morning, which dangled from a corner of his mouth.

  McAllister checked the clock. “Let’s get on, we’ve a paper to publish.”

  Don spread the new-look layout over the High Table, his blasphemous term for the square table used by the reporters. Five large typewriters took up one end and the layout filled the other. The gap between table and walls made a passage just wide enough for two to pass if they were good friends.

  Joanne leaned over and took a look. “Don, you’re an artist!” she exclaimed.

  “Oh my, Mr. McLeod, this is wonderful.” Mrs. Smart, the office manager, had come in and was looking over Joanne’s shoulder.

  “It’s certainly different,” Rob contributed.

  “Not bad at all,” was McAllister’s opinion.

  Don McLeod’s chest swelled like a wee bantam cock about to chase the chickens. He opened his mouth to explain more, stopped, stared, looked at the gangling figure in the doorway—six foot three would be Don’s guess—and said, “Dr. Livingston, I presume.”

  It was the nut-brown face and the plus fours and the tweed deerstalker hat, which could have easily been a pith helmet, that made Don think of the legendary explorer.

  “Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle, actually. But please call me Beech. Everyone does. How do you do?”

  “Fine, thanks,” an awestruck Rob replied.

  And like a character out of a Boy’s Own Adventure novel, darkest Africa chapter, the gentleman stuck out his hand. Rob took it and immediately, in spite of at least fifty years between them, they became fast friends.

  “Beech will be writing our new Countryside column,” McAllister explained.

  “Oh really? And who’s doing Town?” Rob had meant this as a facetious remark and nearly fell off his stool at the answer.

  “Your mother.”

  This time McAllister had consulted his deputy and Don had agreed with him. Margaret McLean was as well informed about goings-on in the town as Don McLeod, but in an entirely different social strata. Birdlife and nature, on the other hand, meant nothing to Don—nor to most of their readers. Don cared little about farming practices, but anything that stirred up the farming gentry was fine by him. The final argument on the hiring, McAllister wanted kept secret. But Don knew. Beech was on the board of guardians, that obscure body that oversaw the finances of the newspaper for the investors.

  “ ‘Town and Country!’ ‘McAllister’s Mischief,’ that’s what it should be called,” Don was to remark later over his usual pint and a half. And as usual, he was not wrong.

  With Don McLeod as deputy editor and chief subeditor; Joanne Ross and Rob McLean on reporting duties; Hector Bain the photographer; McAllister the editor-in-chief, writing the leader and obituaries; and Mrs. Smart overseeing the finances, they were all set to revamp a newspaper essentially unchanged since 1867.

  Later that afternoon McAllister was sorting through the photographs of the fire. They were spectacular. He finally chose one showing flames shooting up through the decking, an oily black cloud of smoke ascending towards h
eaven, the name of the boat, The Good Shepphard, clear, the whole disaster showing in duplicate on the flat-calm waters of the canal basin. And in silhouette, to one side of the picture, his body conveying his anguish, was the skipper—Alexander Skinner of the Black Isle.

  “Great front page for the new Highland Gazette,” McAllister murmured, happy at last. “Let’s hope this story runs for weeks.”

  TWO

  The bruising on Joanne Ross was invisible. Like a peach with the flesh discolored around the stone, she seemed untouched. But the shame of “having to get married,” that understated euphemism for the rush to the altar, followed by a six-month pregnancy, marred her own marriage and caused her parents to disown her. Ten years on, they had not relented; they had never forgiven her for shaming them, never met their grandchildren. The pain has softened but when asked by friends, by her children, she made excuses about never visiting—the price of the train tickets, her parents being too elderly to have young children around, anything other than tell the truth.

  She was aware that she was a quarter-step ahead or behind the beat of the community. Her mood often depended on the weather, her opinions seemingly influenced by a mischievous imp hovering somewhere in the region of her left shoulder. A tune, a song, a poem could change her walk. Her wide-open face showed the bloodlines of a true Scot. But her cheekbones were on the edge of too strong, her mouth on the side of too wide, and her skin too freckled to be considered beautiful.

  She knew her husband was ashamed of her; he’d married a woman who would never fit in, in the Highland town where respectability was all-important and being “different” was a sin.

  “Stubborn,” her husband, Bill Ross, called her. “Too much schooling” in her mother-in-law’s opinion. “Stuck up” was the phrase one of the mothers at the school had used. A mind of her own, McAllister thought, but he meant that as praise.

  Joanne shook off thoughts of her failed marriage and went back to typing. She worked steadily, her athletic shoulders wrestling with the heavy, awkward typewriter as easily as a cowboy with a steer, plowing through lists scribbled on scrap paper, typed notes, scrawls on the back of an envelope, and one that just said “repeat last year’s.” They were all notices of the holidays and events surrounding Easter.

  She glanced at the clock, one surely stolen from a railway station waiting room, and noted she had five minutes before anyone else would appear. She made tidy piles of the bits of copy paper, the finished work ready for Don’s pencil. Then she would retype it all over again. How she could continue with all this, plus her new job as full-time reporter and her new status as a single mother, she hadn’t yet worked out.

  Ask for help, Rob had suggested. But she couldn’t. Not wouldn’t, couldn’t. Silly I know, she told herself often, recognizing in herself that trait that seemed to be one of mothers and women in general, that catchall phrase used when help was offered—I can manage. Yes, she could manage, but only by being first in, last out.

  “Blast,” Joanne spoke out loud. “Five minutes more, that’s all I need.” The phone kept ringing. “Double blast.” It wasn’t going to stop. “Highland Gazette.” She sighed.

  “Just the girl I’m after.”

  “Patricia Ord Mackenzie—you are psychic. I was about to call you.” A small white lie—Joanne had been meaning to call Patricia, but first she needed to don an armor-plated carapace of confidence to deal with her oldest friend.

  “It’s all that water from the Fairy Well I’ve been downing—makes me psychic,” Patricia laughed.

  “We’re looking forward to this Easter holiday.” Joanne meant it. Holidays away were not something she could afford, but she was looking forward to a few days away—as long as they didn’t have to spend much time with Patricia’s mother. “The girls are driving me crazy with questions about the Black Isle. Are your parents prepared for the onslaught of two lively children?”

  Patricia laughed again.

  “The house is big. We can avoid them as much as possible.”

  Joanne wholeheartedly agreed with her friend. As much space as possible between her, her children, and Patricia’s mother would be a very good idea. The Ord Mackenzie family was very grand in an estate-owning, ancient-name, Highland-gentry way. And Mrs. Janet Ord Mackenzie made certain that everyone showed due deference to her as the lady of the estate.

  “Anyway,” Patricia continued, “I’ve called to ask you to come early. The eight-o’clock ferry. I’ve something special planned.”

  “Eight on a Thursday? It’ll mean a rush. Everyone at the Gazette usually goes out together on Wednesday night, and this week is special as we’re . . .”

  “I’ll pick you up at the jetty and we’ll go straight there.”

  “Go where?” Joanne was intrigued.

  “A surprise. I’ve some really good news.”

  “So have I. We’re launching the new Gazette, and I’ve been given the front page, my first big story. It’s really exciting, it’s about a fire and . . .”

  “Wear your glad rags tomorrow,” Patricia interrupted. “It’s a special day.”

  “Now you’ve got me really curious.” She caved in—as Patricia knew she would. “Fine then. Eight-o’clock ferry.”

  Joanne hung up the telephone. “Patricia Ord Mackenzie,” she muttered, “what are you up to?”

  Feeling slighted, she looked up at the ceiling, and shaking her head, said, “Thanks for listening to me too, Patricia. Thanks for being interested in my life.”

  Although they had met when they were seven, and had been at boarding school together for the whole of their education, Joanne was never sure if they were close—there was a touch of the bully in her friend. Perhaps it was their family circumstances. Patricia came from a wealthy, landowning family; Joanne was a daughter of the manse. But, Joanne acknowledged, in their years in a bleak, Scottish boarding school, where crying singled you out as a baby, they had formed an unlikely friendship, a friendship of girls who never quite fitted in with the clique. Or at least Joanne assumed it was a friendship. So why do I always feel inferior when I am with Patricia? Why do I always give in?

  The noise on the stone stairway interrupted Joanne’s reverie. Everyone seemed to materialize in the reporters’ room at the same time—a difficult feat given the width of the stairs.

  “I declare the news conference open. All aboard and correct and ready for D-Day?” McAllister looked around the ensemble, taking in the nods and grins and ayes and the shrug from Don. “Mrs. Smart?”

  “I’m pleased with the response from our advertisers, Mr. McAllister. Most have taken more space. There is also a full page from Arnotts advertising the latest televisions.”

  “Well done, Mrs. Smart. Don?”

  “The printers and compositors are ready.” He didn’t mention he’d promised them a bonus of a couple of bottles of whisky if they got the new edition out on time. “The expanded sports pages are looking good,” he continued, “Countryside column too. The only problem with it is the length of Mr. Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle’s name. Maybe we should give him a pseudonym. . . .”

  “Five shillings for the best suggestion,” McAllister declared. “On the subject of new columns, I’m instituting one, the title is ‘For a’ That.’ It will go on the opinion page, I’ll use it to stir things up a bit.”

  “Only if it is checked by a legal eagle,” Don told him.

  “Naturally. Rob?” McAllister asked.

  “I’ve a report on the plans for the new bridge across the river. I did a vox pop as you suggested. A surprising number of people are concerned that another bridge would fulfill the Brahan Seer’s prophecy and bring disaster to the town.”

  “Don,” McAllister turned to him, “a heading stating a threat to the town from a seventeenth-century seer would be great. Joanne?”

  “I’ve written up the fire and covered the meeting with the fire chief. I think that’s everything.”

  “I see.” He was busy and brusque and wanted Joanne to stop looking nervo
us every time he asked her a question. “Did you call the fire chief for an update? The police? The procurator fiscal’s office to ask what the charge will be? Do you have a quote from anyone in the fishing village in the Black Isle? This must be a big event for them. The west coast connection, what’s that about? Have anything to add to turn this into a front page to remember?”

  McAllister hadn’t noticed Joanne getting pinker and pinker and squirming on her stool as he counted off the phone calls yet to be made, facts yet to be ascertained, opinions yet to be canvassed. But Don did.

  “For heaven’s sake, give the lassie time to draw breath.” Don pointed his finger at Rob. “You, you talk to the polis seeing as how you’re so pally with Woman Police Constable McPherson. You, McAllister, call your new pal Beauchamp in the Black Isle; see if he’s heard any gossip. Me, I’ll talk to my contact in the procurator fiscal’s office and I’ll call our man on the west coast, see if he can find out anything, and Joanne,” he turned to her, “call the fire chief, ask if he’s finished his report and ask if you can have a sneak look at it. Use your charms. Then, let’s say . . .” he glanced at the clock, “. . . eleven thirty, we’ll get together and see where we’re at.”

  “Yes, Mr. McLeod.” Rob laughed.

  “And you,” he pointed to his boss, “in your office now, I’d like a wee word.”

  Don carefully shut the door of McAllister’s office, well aware that Rob and Joanne would be waiting to hear the explosion. But he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

  McAllister sat down, lit a cigarette, and waited for Don to do the same.

  “This fire is a big story,” Don started. “It’s not every day you hear about Molotov cocktails in the Highlands. It’s a great front page to launch the paper.” Don’s tone changed to a low, pre-bark growl. “But for heaven’s sake, just because you fancy the lassie and are getting nowhere, stop taking your frustration out on her. I’m not having it. Right?”

  Don left, closing the door behind him before McAllister could recover enough to reply.