A Kind of Grief (42 page)

H
e meant those threats. Didn't work. Then he tried charm, tempting me with the Hermitage. I laughed. Exposure means little to me, but it would devastate my maiden aunts. What fun!

Then I considered the loss of freedom to walk the glens, to paint under a great open sky, to hear the skylark. Those I will not risk losing.

“Please,” he'd asked, “give it to me as a keepsake.”

“I don't have it,” I said. “I burned it.”

But he knew I was lying. That was my best work. I did it in a frenzy of lust, wine, and inspiration, and it is good. “My version of The Last Supper,” I told him. Which it turned out to be; not a last supper, exactly, but the last of those summer evenings amongst friends. He, they, knew what I had seen—even if I didn't. Not then. Drinking, laughing, talking until dawn, reading poetry with the moon reflecting on the river, we were friends, family—with a side serving of betrayal.

That drawing might be dangerous, but it is my only keepsake of those intoxicating times.

Calum Mackenzie was lost in his new home. The streets in the center of town he'd conquered. He recognized the names of the outlying suburbs, thanks to the book of maps Elaine bought him. He and Elaine had gone out to the Holm Mills to buy him a jumper, a red one, so he knew the road to the south side of Loch Ness.

“A change from all that blue your mother buys you,” she'd said. He'd told her his mother insisted red did not suit him. Elaine laughed.

Now, in his red jumper, underneath a tweed jacket more suitable for an octogenarian than a twenty-two-year-old, he watched as McAllister went into his office, Don and Rob and Hector following.

“What's going on?” he whispered to Lorna when they were alone.

“Search me.” She shrugged her shoulders and grinned. Her black-lined eyes sparkled and her pale lipstick shone as she teased, “Feeling left out, are ye?”

“No, but there's been lots o' comings and goings. We're reporters on the
Gazette
, so . . .”

“So?” she asked. “If you want to impress the bosses, get out, talk to people, don't wait for information to come to you.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.” He'd never met anyone like Lorna. He wanted to say,
But I don't know anyone down here
. Without his mother to keep him abreast of the gossip, the developments, the traffic, and the farm and glen and sea news, he had no contacts and no ideas. In this town of strangers and strangeness, he was lost. But he didn't share that; Lorna was only seventeen, and a girl.

“Talking of which, I'm off to the hospital. There's an introduction to the new head surgeon come up from England, plus a graduation ceremony for the nurses in the specialist unit.”

“My Elaine's one o' the nurses; maybe I should cover that.”

“Too bad. I asked for an invitation, so it's my story.”

He knew he should have followed up. Elaine had told him of the event a week ago. Even Hector would be there. He was staring at the phone, in a dwam of self-pity, when it rang. “
Highland Gazette
.”

“Calum, I've—”

“Mum, we agreed. I phone you after six o'clock. No phone calls to the office.”

“Well, if you don't want to know about the police going back to search Miss Ramsay's house and the byre, I'll just keep ma mouth shut.”

He sighed, reached for his notebook, and began. “Tell me. But it's unlikely to be used, as the story is local to Sutherland.”

“You've been offered your old job back.”

“Mum, we've been over that.”

“Fine.” She sniffed. “I know when I'm not wanted.” He was about to hang up when she said, “I was thinking about the car that hit me. I'm certain it was black, but I couldn't see the person behind the wheel. It was in here one time for a flat tire, and right muddy it was, so your dad washed it. The driver, this English fellow, he paid cash, said he didn't need a receipt, but you know me, always efficient, so I wrote down the numberplate.”

Much like trainspotters, his mother often whiled away a slow afternoon writing down the registration number of passing cars. Calum saw it as a harmless hobby, until Elaine had joked that Mrs. Mackenzie could use the information to point out that someone was not where they should be and could lose their job, marriage, and reputation if discovered. “Mum would never do anything like that,” he'd said.

“Calum? Calum? You there?”

“Give me the number. Then I have to go. I've an appointment in ten minutes.”

He scribbled it down, made a promise to come back on Saturday. “Just this once,” he said, and escaped.

There was no appointment, no story, no work—or at least none he thought Don McLeod would be interested in. So he left for the Italian café that was all the rage amongst the young professionals of the town.

He was walking through the Victorian market when he admitted to himself that he didn't like coffee. As there was no one he wanted to impress, he made for the tea shop Rob had introduced him to. Best bacon rolls, Rob told him, and as Calum chewed on one, he agreed.

It also had the best view of the station car park, and this Calum enjoyed. His father had hoped his son would follow him as a mechanic, taking over the business one day. But Calum preferred trains—big, puffing, spitting, gleaming steam engines. And Calum liked people watching—running for trains, coming out with luggage; happy alone, happy with family, unhappy with family; on a visit to the capital of the Highlands for the doctor, a solicitor, or the courthouse. People watching was something he and Joanne had in common.

He was counting out the coins to pay for his lunch when he saw the car arrive. Just another big black car, he thought, but I may as well check.

With little enthusiasm, he walked towards the car, where someone, hat on, overcoat also, was sitting with a newspaper open over the steering wheel, smoking, waiting.

The numberplate was the one his mother had given him, the same number he'd asked his policeman pal back home to investigate. Inquiring about it had raised questions. Brought forth officials. And intrigue. And maybe, possibly, perhaps, that same car and driver had knocked over his mother.

Calum's breath wouldn't come. The bacon roll and two industrial-strength cups of tea weighed down his stomach, slowing his legs. He turned away. Lost.

He returned to the
Gazette
. There was nowhere else to go.

“Mr. McAllister, I—”

“Not now, Calum.”

“Don't look at me either, laddie, I'm away out,” Don said before he even asked.

“Sorry, Calum. Catch you later, yeah?” Rob was off and running down the stairs in a clatter of boots and a jangle of keys.

Lorna was still out. Hector also. Frankie Urquhart was no help, as this was editorial, not advertising, and conversations with Frankie needed to be in ten-second bursts between phone calls. Friends and colleagues in Sutherland wouldn't take him seriously, not when he mentioned the inquiry involved his mother.

Still, Calum couldn't shake the fear that the car was important. So he did what he knew he shouldn't do. He called his mother.

Joanne put the pie in the oven, then decided to invite Don for supper, promising him an apple pie for pudding. It took him five minutes for the ten-minute drive from his home on Church Street to their home off Crown Drive.

Two extra helpings of pie later, he and McAllister were sitting either side of the fire, saying little and, so full, moving less. “No update on the Stuart fellow, him who was impersonating a spy?” Don asked.

“Who calls himself Stuart,” McAllister reminded him. “None. Only speculation on our part. After all, Hennessey has never stated that Stuart is an imposter.”

“A right tricky lot, them spies.” Don had never believed that the earlier revelations of a spy ring in the British secret services told the full story. And accepted he would never find out. “So we won't be having him as a front-page scoop. Pity.”

“There is a story we might be able to use. Dougald Forsythe, the art expert, is in a spot of bother.”

“Him who beat you to the drawing?”

“Don't remind me!” McAllister paused. “A second opinion is saying that his very expensive drawing is a master forgery.” How they could run the story in the
Gazette
was problematical. So he explained to Don what had happened and the dilemma of how to make it relevant to their readers. “We need to word it so it not only connects to the
Gazette
but is syndicated to the
Herald
and other newspapers with our byline,” McAllister began.

“Our intrepid reporter Joanne Ross discovered the drawing, and—”

“I'm not having my wife splashed about on the front page of—”

“Since when did you make decisions for me?” Joanne came in carrying a tea tray. She bumped the door shut with her hip and said, “Put another log on the fire, McAllister, it's winter. Or hadn't you noticed?” She put down the tray, turned her back on her husband, and asked Don, “So what's this about?”

He told her.

“I like it. Forsythe is not connected with spies, so the gentlemen from the government can have no objections.”

“As far as we know,” Don agreed.

“But the publicity?” McAllister asked.

“Joanne Ross believes in the public's right to know. It's Mrs. McAllister who wants a quiet life,” she said. “Use the auction as background, then reveal the drawing is fake.”

“Yes, but how did we discover it is fake?”

“Blame Hector,” she said.

“Now, that is a brilliant idea,” Don said, mentally composing a headline for an article yet to be written.

Superintendent Westland knew the geography of the town and knew the senior staff on the
Gazette.
He well remembered Don McLeod. “A useful man to have on our side,” he remarked to DI Dunne.

“And the reverse,” the policeman replied.

The superintendent met Don in the pub on Baron Taylor's Lane. After a sip of the excellent draft beer, he asked Don, “Would it be possible to leave for the Baltic countries from here without anyone knowing?”

“Aye. Danzig always did good trade with Scotland. As for all thon Soviet countries, you could ship out from here no bother. What your reception on arrival will be depends.”

For both of them the idea of a spy escaping from this small town to fame and fortune, or infamy and a Soviet pension, was intriguing. Thrilling, even.

“Didn't thon traitors escape via France? Maybe on documents forged by Alice Ramsay?” Don was enjoying the thought. Not that he approved of traitors and spies, but the machinations of governments he had no time for.

“On a cross-channel ferry via France.” The superintendent sighed. “Pretty embarrassing for the spy agencies. Thank goodness I'm just a mere police officer sent to escort the expert from Westminster.”

Don thought “mere police officer” was twaddle, and he doubted that escorting a senior spy was all the superintendent was here for. Here sits a very senior policeman, who is accompanying a very senior spy, Don thought, and I will never be allowed to publish the story.