A Kind of Grief (34 page)

“Visitors!” McAllister shot off his chair. “Joanne said there's a brush salesman pestering her.”

“Aye, they're around this time o' year. They call on me an' all, but best to check.” Don said this to footsteps already halfway down the stairs, hurrying for the door and home.

“Brush salesman? You asked me to an urgent meeting to inquire about a door-to-door salesman?”

It was the next day. Stuart was implying he'd rushed to the Highlands on the overnight train, when McAllister knew he was a resident of a hotel on the north side of the river.

“My wife is certain someone is watching her. Certain someone has been in our house. So yes, I'm checking on a brush salesman.”

“And now so am I,” DI Dunne added.

“Mr. McAllister, I leave for London on the overnight train. I have finished my task. You will not be troubled again.”

The editor knew he was being dismissed, and his frustration at the man's intransigence surfaced. “So was it you and your henchmen? First I find you attending a country auction. Then you threaten me. Spying on my home? A hit-and-run accident? Wrecking an empty house? Isn't it all a bit drastic? Seems to me, for someone so secretive, you are completely amateurish, flagging your presence wherever you go.”

Stuart said nothing. But his silence said much.

It was then that McAllister understood that Stuart had told the truth about one thing—the man was indeed an “office wallah.” His self-description said more than that; the very phrase indicated a man from a former colonial background, army perhaps, and private education and privilege certainly. He was everything McAllister despised—a man elevated to a job beyond his intelligence, hired, and promoted because of birth and education at the right schools. And, most of all, family connections.

McAllister continued, “Someone was,
is
, searching for something. It all connects with Alice Ramsay.”

“That may be so. But you and the local police will never know.” Stuart said this quietly, not boasting, not threatening, just stating a fact. His was a profession far removed from the life and experience of a small-town editor, of a small-town policeman.

“One final point. The Leonardo drawing, how does that come into all this?” McAllister almost missed the slight movement in the man's cheek. Was it a smile? A tic? An admission of heaven knew what?

“A fine example of a master at work,” Stuart replied. “Gentlemen, please excuse me.” He stood. “I am certain our paths will not cross again, so I will say good-bye.” He was wise enough not to offer his hand to McAllister.

McAllister remained seated.

“The matter is over. You have my word.” Stuart's face blank, voice firm, spoke as though in command of a regiment. “Good-bye, Inspector. Good-bye, Mr. McAllister.”

When they were alone, McAllister quoted, “Ours not to reason why . . .”

The policeman couldn't resist finishing the quotation. “Ours but to do and die.”

Why the patrol officers stopped the car DI Dunne never discovered. How the small pouch of drawing implements was taken into custody was clearer; the chamois leather roll was in a compartment underneath the spare tire in the boot of the car.

“What made you search the car?” Dunne asked the constable.

The young police officer did not confess that it was his first time as a driver on road patrol and that he was overkeen to book someone, anyone. That the car was big and black and powerful, with English registration plates, and that he'd stopped the car out of curiosity he also kept to himself. “The car was speeding,” PC Cameron said.

“By a lot?”

“No really. But I had to give it some wellie—sorry—I had to accelerate to overtake him.”

He and his fellow policeman had used their flashing blue light and siren and were thrilled by the chase.

“When he got out the car, he was right unhappy.” This was mostly untrue. The man had been quiet. Too quiet. Too cooperative. That seemed suspicious in a place where motorists would argue pink was purple to get out of a speeding charge. “Anyhow, me an' Allie thought we'd better check.”

“You were being careful.”

The constable worried that Dunne was reproaching him.

“Sergeant Patience says you can never be too careful.”

“Quite right.”

“We took him in. The sarge looked at what we found. We made a list, gave all his stuff back to him. Then the sergeant told the man to go to his nearest police station within seven days with his license and insurance.”

“He didn't have those with him?”

“No. No license, no insurance, no ID.”

“Why didn't you charge him with speeding?”

The young policeman blushed at the humiliation. “The motorist denied he was speeding. Sitting exactly on the speed limit, he said. An' he said that if we could overtake him in our patrol car, he couldney've been going that fast.”

Dunne presumed the car had been speeding—slightly. He also knew that a foreigner from London, with the voice and demeanor of entitlement, would panic a young man on the first day in a job he had wanted and trained for ever since joining the police force.

“There was no one else in the car.” This wasn't a question. Dunne already knew the answer.

“No, Inspector. He was alone.”

The contents of the chamois roll had baffled the custody sergeant. He did not think to consult his inspector, so it was fortuitous that Dunne saw the contents listed on the charge sheet. By that time, the man had left.

“Aye, but we have his registration number and address,” the sergeant said. “I'll check.”

He left the sergeant peering at the booking sheet through half-moon spectacles, before reaching for the telephone. Good luck with that, the inspector thought.

Dunne called McAllister.

McAllister said, “I don't remember, exactly. Joanne will know. But I think a pen holder and nibs, Chinese calligraphy brushes, and an inkstone. No seals or stamps.”

The sergeant had said he didn't examine the stamps but remembered some were in metal, a few were wood. There were seals and sealing wax. There was a box stuffed full of old paper. There was what looked like some receipt books, but they were in a foreign script. “Russian?” he'd guessed.

Dunne continued, “This fellow told Sergeant Patience he worked with museums rebinding old books and such like and these were the tools of his trade.”

“Tools of the trade—maybe.
His
tools? Unlikely.” McAllister sighed. An explanation was unlikely. “We know Miss Ramsay was a forger. And we know she worked in some branch of the security services in London. But did she continue to work for who knows who when she left? And does all this relate to her death?”

“Mr. McAllister . . .”

McAllister, alerted by the “Mr.,” could guess what was coming.

“The verdict was suicide. The matter is over.” Stated simply. Said as a matter of fact. The policeman was being neither judgmental nor encouraging. But the hidden rebuke was there. The question: Why are you letting your wife involve herself in an affair this dangerous?

“Joanne doesn't believe the woman committed suicide.” Both men knew that the obsession of the living with the untimely dead could destroy even the sanest of survivors.

“Her opinion, your opinion, even mine, do not matter here. We are dealing with a government agency with powers way beyond our experience.”

“Joanne is editing the manuscript Miss Ramsay was working on before her death.” Here McAllister hesitated. The work on Alice's manuscript gave Joanne pleasure, purpose, perhaps an obsession. “Naturally, the life and death of Miss Ramsay are of interest.”

“Is there a connection between the manuscript and her death?”

“Paintings of the local flora and fauna? I don't see how.” McAllister lit another cigarette to help him think. “Miss Ramsay's house was vandalized. You said the man your constables stopped and searched was calm and professional. So would he wreck the house? Search thoroughly, yes. But Calum Mackenzie said windows were smashed, floorboards ripped up, pipes pulled out, water flooding the kitchen—the vandalism was done in anger.”

McAllister heard the policeman groan before saying,“That's a matter for the Sutherland Constabulary.”

“I told Calum Mackenzie the same.” Both men felt it was yet another part of the puzzle.

“Stuart's departure is the end of it.” Dunne's words were certain, his thoughts less so. “So I doubt we will ever know.”

And therein lies the problem, McAllister didn't say.

I
can't condemn Mrs. Mackenzie. Gossip is a form of currency, and without it, my job, and the lives of our operatives, would be impossible. To add veracity to a false identity, I relied on agents to provide me with current gossip, the slang, the jokes going around. That and the price of beer and bread and cigarettes.

What was the opinion of the man in the bar? The housewife in the market? I would pick a reference here, a piece of gossip there, and weave them into a new identity.

When I returned here, so many years later, I began to understand that Mrs. Mackenzie needed to be someone in the community. Being married and the owner of a prosperous local business brings her status. She trades information and feels needed. Unfortunately, she also embellishes the stories.

I tell her nothing. I smile. I'm polite. I pay my bills before they are due.

I should have known better. Nothing will satisfy her until she's discovered the minutiae of every moment of my life before coming up north to retire. (That's what I told her, and that is the truth. Mostly.)

No, I won't give her the satisfaction of my life's story. I've no wish to be a character in her dramas. In revenge, she encouraged, and exaggerated a ridiculous rumor. She calls me a witch instead of saying what she really wants to say: “a stuck-up bitch.”

Foolish me for thinking I could be anonymous in a place where my family was once known. But the glen bewitched me.