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Authors: A. D. Scott
A Double Death on the Black Isle
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A D
OUBLE
D
EATH
ON
THE
B
LACK
I
SLE
To Martin Scott McNiven
UTHOR'S
N
OTE
Although the majority of this book is geographically accurate, some of the places in the town and on the Black Isle have been deliberately obscured, others invented. Many of the names are commonplace to the Highlands of Scotland but none of the characters are based on people living or dead. This is entirely a work of my imagination.
A D
OUBLE
D
EATH
ON
THE
B
LACK
I
SLE
NE
C
ycling across the suspension bridge over the wide, fast-flowing river Joanne Ross glanced downâno, no bodies. She looked up at the pink-red castle filling the skyline and the town circling around itâno, no ambulances, no fire engines, no accidents. On the last few panting yards up the cobbled steepness of Castle Wynd she looked towards the police station and courthouse, hoping for anyone, anything of interest. Then she caught herself.
What are you? Some kind of ghoul? Wishing for death and drama so you can have a scoop on the front page of the
Gazette?
So you can impress your editor? So you can be somebody?
It was Tuesday, the day before deadline on the
Highland Gazette,
and the weekly anxiety was always the same: Would it be the same roundup of the same stories of the same place and people, with only the date changed? Or would a real news story break in time for deadline?
Joanne arrived in the office before the othersâas usual. She wriggled onto the high chair; pushed her thick, nut-brown hair behind her ears; rolled a small piece of copy paper into a huge typewriter; flexed her fingers, readying herself for the battle with words and machine.
Rob McLean, the other reporter on the
Gazette
, clattered through the door in an icy mist of semi-arctic air. It was April and despite the calendar and the daffodils and the spring blossoms, winter had yet to leave.
He threw his scarf on the desk; Joanne threw it back at him. Keeping his motorbike jacket on, he parked himself on the desk.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“Probably trying to find something of interest for the front page,” Joanne replied. “As should you be. Deadline? Tomorrow afternoon? Same as every week? Remember?”
He looked down at her green-eyed brightness, “Aye, I remember.”
They grinned at each other and Joanne was reminded why Rob was her friend.
When she first met the self-styled star reporter, just out of his teens, ten years her junior, darling of girls ages three to one hundred and three, the only son of one of the most illustrious solicitors in the county, her initial reaction was distrust; men who were this good-lookingâmen with wheat-colored hair and startling blue eyes and a wonderful, cheeky grinâshould be untrustworthy. Or so she had believed until she became friends with Rob McLean.
The telephone rang. Rob leaned across the reporters' table and grabbed the receiver.
“Highland Gazette.”
“There's a fishing boat on fire in the canal! Right next to the bonded warehouses. Maybe the whisky will explode!”
“Really? Can I have your name?”
“It's me, Rob, Hector.”
“Not you!” Rob's groan made Joanne stop typing and listen.
“Suit yerself. I'm away to take more photos.”
“Can whisky explode?” Rob spoke into a dead receiver.
“There's a boat on fire down by the whisky warehouses.” He jumped off the table. “See you later.” He was out the reporters' room like a rabbit with a ferret on its tail.
Joanne thought for all of two seconds. “Wait for me.” Three steps behind, she raced down the stone stairway.
“I've a feeling this is the front page,” Rob said as he bumped the motorbike off the pavement.
“You'll be more unbearable than usual if you're right.”
My mother-in-law can tut all she likes, but thank goodness I'm wearing trousers, Joanne thought as she swung onto the back of Rob's bike.
Before she had a chance to button her coat, they were off in a red streak down towards the river, across the bridge, off to investigate the fire. Rob's overlong, straw-yellow hair caught her in the eye and the straight stretch of roadâlike any other road leading out of any other town, bleak, mean, and litteredâwent by in a blur. They flew past a school, a long row of grey council houses, past the Caledonian football grounds, up the slight rise to the canal, coming to a halt in the queue of traffic held up by the half-raised, articulated bridge. It had opened to allow the boat to pass through to the flight of locks to begin the slow, spectacular process of being lifted from sea level to the much higher canal to continue the journey to Loch Ness and beyond.
Three cars, one lorry, and two cyclists were waiting on the town side. More vehicles were queued up on the opposite side of the canal. A small group of spectators were chattering away, excited by the fire. Clouds of thick, black, oily, acrid smoke blew hither and yon, fanned by a capricious North Sea wind, blotting out the distant hills and mountains. The fishing boat was well alight.
Joanne glanced towards the canal locks. She looked quickly away. The memory of the small boy found murdered there last year made her desperately sad; the memories of the suspicion that stalked the town, of the betrayals, and most of all of her own guilt, still hurt.
I believed the word of a monster. I chose not to believe the obvious. Never again will I close my eyes and ears, and ignore my children's stories simply because they are children.
In spite of being a single mother escaping from a violent marriage, Joanne Ross was determined never to repeat
her
loveless childhood with her girls.
A waft of smoke enveloped her, breaking her reverie. She started to cough. The smell irritated her nostrils; a cloying mix of burning rubber and incinerated herring, it would take days to get out of her clothes and hair and put her off fish for a good while.
A scurry of firemen were scrambling about, shouting, dragging hoses, trying to find a way to reach the drifting boat, all the while knowing it was a lost cause: the herring smack was as ablaze as a sacrificial Viking longboat at Up Helly Aa.
“Look at that!” Rob elbowed Joanne, mesmerized by the frantic scene below.
They watched the uniformed figures dancing along the towpath, their cries and shouts borne in the wind like the cries of squabbling seagulls. Two firemen were pulling a reluctant hose, another dropped a hand pump into the canal, others were using long pikestaffs to stop the boat from drifting and at the same time keep it away from shore, away from the bonded warehouse holding a good portion of the whisky of the Highlands of Scotland.
The canal basin was mirror-still, making a double image of the fire and the centuries-old, stone buildings along the towpath. At the far end of the tongue-shaped waters, she could see the Black Isle crisp and clear, its lower slopes delineated in violent yellow gorse. With the distant hills, the topmost snowy tip of Ben Wyvis, and infinite blue sky, the setting was so picturesque that the oily smoke belching from the fire seemed a desecration.
The harbormaster stood rubbing the top of his head in
frustration, unable to do anything about the disaster jamming up his precious canal and preventing the bridge from being lowered. His shouts at no one in particular were completely ignored.
Spectators from the neighboring village of Clachnaharry, the site of one of the many mostly forgotten battles in Scottish history, gathered on the opposite bank of the canal. The spectacular inferno set them hooting and skirling like Saturday-matinee Red Indians, the cries even louder as a bright burst of flame shot up, sending showers of sparks heavenward.
In the midst of the mayhem, Hector Bain, camera wielded like a weapon, was taking pictures. In and out of the crowd he ducked, stopping still for a second to take a shot, darting off for a different angle, feverishly trying to round up some of the firemen for a better composition, working the scene like a border collie with a panicked flock of sheep.
It took Joanne a moment to realize that this multi-colored miniature of a person with two cameras and what looked like his schoolbag round his neck was not an orange-haired troll. It took the morning for her to realize that Hector Bain was Rob McLean's nemesis.
“Let's get closer.” Rob was off.
Joanne needed no encouragement. There was something elemental about a fire. They hurried down the towpath to join the mêlée. The massive iron gates that guarded the warehouses and guarded the bonded whisky for the taxman were open for once. As they got nearer it was obvious the boat was doomed. The bridge and wheelhouse were gutted, the engine room well ablaze. Joanne spluttered. Another gust sent a swirling stinking black cloud of fumes in their direction. Her eyes watered, her nose now hurt.