Remembrance

                                    Remembrance

            There was a line of cars above the voe, parked along the bend just past the school, near tyres brushing the wire fence, off tyres half-way across the road.  I glanced down at the water, even though I knew there’d be no rowing in November.  Dolphins, maybe?     Then I remembered, and looked up at the hillside.  The granite cross had a scattering of men in black circling it.  One was in a wheelchair; beside his head, there was the flutter of a Gordon Highlanders kilt.  Robbie and John Leask.  Armistice morning was the only time they were ever seen together.  One had stolen the other’s girl while on leave, and they’d never spoken since.

            I negotiated round the cars half-blocking the road and drove on.

            When I returned, nearly an hour later, there was one car still there.  Robbie’s, with the disabled sticker.  I glanced up at the memorial, surprised and a bit uneasy, then drew into the verge.  An hour was a long time for an invalid in his seventies to sit in the raw November air.  Maybe he’d wanted to stay behind, and his chair had got stuck in the soft ground.

            The wind was cold on my face, the sea glinting gun-metal grey.  The gravel of the first road-gritting crunched under my feet as I rounded the verge and found the path up.  On each side of me, rocks protruded like bones through the khaki grass.

            Robbie was dead.  He sat in his wheelchair below the rough grey cross, head slumped so far forwards that it touched his still hands, back humped over so that I could see the slit in the centre of the jacket where a knife had gone in.

            ‘So,’ DI Gavin Macrae said, ‘you presented me with a classic locked-room mystery.’

            ‘And you’ve already solved it,’ I said.  He raised one eyebrow.  I looked across at the mug of tea on the table in front of him; at the relaxed way he was leaning his russet head against Khalida’s bulkhead.  ‘Or you'd still be out looking.  Go on, then.  A locked room.’

            He reached behind the fiddle for my brass candleholder and placed it on the table.  ‘Memorial.’  The box of matches joined it.  ‘Wheelchair.  Have you ever seriously thought what a fire-hazard candles are on a boat?’

            ‘Have you ever seriously thought how many engine hours it takes to generate reading light for an evening?’  I passed a handful of cork bungs across.  ‘The other people.’

            ‘In a horse-shoe around the memorial.  He – Robbie Leask – had his brother on one side, at the end of the horse-shoe,’ – the cork stood to attention – ‘and another veteran on the other side.’  Now the matchbox sat under guard.  ‘Frank Hay.  He served in the merchant service, good record.  Robbie and his brother were both army, but different regiments.’

            ‘John transferred,’ I said.  I’d consulted my sailing crony Magnie about that.  ‘He was younger.  Robbie joined up first, then John, and John was at training camp when Robbie came home on leave and stole his girlfriend.’ 

‘Da bonniest lass ida place,’ Magnie had called her, ‘wi a smile at’d lure you to walk across water.’  She was Frank Hay’s sister, Inga; he’d never forgiven Robbie either. 

‘She and Robbie got married that same leave, just like that, and left the mother to write to John and tell him.  Then Robbie was blown up and came home crippled, and Inga stopped smiling.  ‘Sho kent sho’d done wrang,’ Magnie said, ‘an sho paid for it.  Nae bairns, joost a bairn o a man.’

            ‘So,’ Gavin said, ‘one man each side.’ He placed the rest of the corks.  ‘There was the reading, then the laying of the wreath – Frank did that – then the silence, and the bugle call.  After that, they all dispersed.  John went first, rather abruptly.’

‘He and Robbie don’t speak.  She died, you see, Inga.  She committed suicide, oh, five years after the war ended.  So John blamed Robbie for that too.  If he hadn’t stolen her, she’d have been alive, with him, with their children.’

 ‘They’re all agreed that Frank offered to push Robbie down,’ Gavin said, ‘and he shook his head.  They left him there alone.  Alive.’

            ‘There must be a good reason why nobody sneaked back to kill him.’

            ‘A crying baby in the house just below the memorial.  The mother was rocking it, standing by the window.  She saw the cars go, except for one, and she’s prepared to swear that nobody else stopped there, or walked past, until yours.’

            ‘Bummer,’ I agreed.  ‘Left alive, alone on the hill; found dead an hour later, stabbed in the back.  Medical knowledge?’

‘Basic Commando training,’ Gavin said.  ‘Which they’d all had.’

 ‘Weapon?’

‘A short-bladed dagger, very sharp, according to forensics.’

            ‘Yes,’ I said, envisaging the murder weapon, ‘yes, it would be.’

            ‘Go on then, Paretsky.’  Gavin set his mug down.  ‘I can see you’ve solved it too; you’re not asking enough questions.’

            ‘If he wasn’t stabbed after the service,’ I said, ‘then it had to happen during it.  A stab in the back isn’t instantly fatal, and sometimes the person doesn’t even realise that was what happened.  He could have kept on going, refused the push to the car, all that.’

            ‘Agreed.’

‘So all the person needed was the nerve to bend over him solicitously and jab the knife in.  Somebody standing beside him.  John or Frank.’ 

‘A risk that the other one would have seen.’

‘Not if he was busy laying the wreath.’  All eyes would be lowered respectfully as Frank carried that scarlet circle forwards to the cross.

‘Still a risk.  Robbie might have cried out, at the sudden pain.’ 

            ‘What comes after the laying of the wreath?  What’s the one occasion you could be certain an old soldier wouldn’t cry out at a sudden stab of pain from his back?’

            Gavin nodded. ‘During the silence.’

‘A lousy motive for John, though,’ I said. ‘His brother stealing his girl fifty years ago.  Wasn’t it a bit long to wait for revenge?’

            ‘The price of petrol,’ Gavin said.  ‘The price of oil, the price of foodstuffs.  Everything going up except his pension and the interest on his savings.  They have a house each, and John was Robbie’s only relative.’  He rose to wash up his mug.  ‘You haven’t mentioned where the weapon came from, among a circle of men in funeral blacks.’

            ‘Except for one.  After the row over Inga, John transferred to the Gordon Highlanders.  A kilted regiment.’  I began to pick up the corks, one by one.  ‘I take it you blood-tested the little dagger in his stocking.’