Lonie 61

Next morning, as the rain ricocheted off the pavement outside Lonie huddled in the phone box close to Partick station. His foot kept the heavy door from shutting, to let in some fresh air, as a slick of pee soiled his shoes and the ammonia smell tapped on his nostrils. He heard the pips, the receiver signalling he’d been connected through to the newsroom, forced two pence into the slot and trying too hard to sound suitably sick muffed his lines a bit, but coughed enough to try and make it believable. The fatman crowed sympathy down the line – the Goldenwell scandal was front page again – so he was told to take enough time as he needed.

Lonie changed trains at Hyndland station. Trains looped off on a branch line to Bearsden terminal. It had a quaint ticket office with a triangular shaped slate roof and chimney pots at each end, which he avoided by stepping over a two bar metal fence. It was about three to four miles from Drumchapel, where young Archie had lived, but a different sort of country, a greenbelt canton of large houses, with cars in the drive and gardens that required a gardener. The name and address of the Bearsden boy who had been killed was a scrap of paper in his coat pocket that would need to be fleshed out. He turned up his collar, bought a map out of the newsagents and started walking, not sure what he was going to say or do.

Off the main Drymen Road and past Bearsden Cross Lonie’s coat began to drag with the incessant rain and his hair became slicked like a child’s oil painting of a man onto his head. He cursed the map which kept sending him up the side streets, which curved like sickles, and he ended up back on the same street, only further along. There also wasn’t anyone about he could ask for directions. The houses in Edgehill Road, when he found them, were modest by Bearsden standards, one storey buildings with front windows that looked out onto gardens that sloped down into rockeries and islands of manicured grass. Lonie worked out which number of Edgehill Road he was searching for by clutching at his map and frowning intensely up at the first few houses until he found one with a common number and not a fancy-dan name. Water dripped off the end of his nose, but he wandered up the driveway sure he’d found the right house. Up the step and outside the front door he became less sure, but, stuck the map snug in the inside of his coat pocket, rang the bell and tried to look like the imposing figure of a front page reporter.

‘Can I help you?’ A lank-haired woman answered the door.

Lonie felt reassured that she didn’t sound snobby. In her early forties, with misty blue eyes and a trendy matching burgundy skirt and jacket some might even have called her pretty. ‘Ah’m a reporter.’ Lonie flashed his best smile, and reached for his press credentials. ‘With the Glasownian.’ He always kept that bit till last.

‘You better come in.’ She pirouetted away, as if she’d been expecting him, before Lonie could get the embossed plastic card out of his pocket.

Two sad-eyed Spaniels looked up at him from their spot on the carpet near the door and wandered over to him, tails wagging, as if petting was their due. Lonie hunkered down and pulled in each dog close, something of the dog smell coming from his damp Crombie, as he patted and petted each dog’s coat and flank and let himself be a soft-nosed touch for more. She stood waiting for him at an open door with latticed glass panels and her lips twitched into a smile.

‘Tally, Muriel, for pity’s sake, leave the poor man alone.’ Her words were not a reprimand, but a slow and deliberate naming, a calling away, of someone she loved.

Lonie followed her into a dining room set out with six chairs around a long rosewood table that smelled of beeswax and summer. She closed the door to keep the dogs out and sat down at the head of the table, with her hands folded out in front of her as if in prayer. Lonie pulled the chair nearest to him out sideways, spoiling the symmetry of the set. He’d his back to the door, and eased off his heavy coat, rainwater dripping onto the thick pile carpet. He was conscious of her watching him which made his movements robotic. He took his packet of Woodbine and Swan Vestas matches out of alternate pockets and quietly placed them on the table. Lonie licked his lips, suddenly shy. ‘Mrs Cameron. You are Mrs Cameron?’ Her head moved ever so slightly up and down, but her eyes didn’t leave his face. ‘You mind if Ah smoke?’

‘No. Not at all.’ She was all action, springing up from her seat, her neck twisting and turning looking for something she could not find. ‘I’ll get you an ashtray.’ Then she was gone. The dining-room door closed behind her -shutting him in. Through the glass panels the two dogs sprawled like windblown brown sacks and sad-eyed him, with ancient wisdom, begging him to drop everything and just come and play. Mrs Cameron brushed past them, on her way back into the room, with a square green glazed ashtray in her manicured hand, which she placed down on the table in front of him as if serving the first dish of a meal. It seemed too clean for Lonie to use, but he lit a fag and left himself with no other option.

‘You’ve come about my son?’ One hand rested calmly on top of the other as she watched him smoking.

‘Yes.’ Lonie knew he had to say more. ‘It was a real shame,’ he added feebly.

‘I thought you would come, because it’s his birthday today.’ She bit her lip and looked out into the garden, where a bush bent over and framed the top of the window. ‘In a way he’s never left home.’ She leaned forward her blue eyes sparkling with tears.

Lonie’s eyed ducked away from hers towards the ashtray. He took a drag on his Woodbine and cleared his throat as if to say something, but his mouth felt filled with leaves.

‘Coffee?’ She patted him on the hand.

‘Aye, that’d be nice.’ He smiled back at her. Lonie had been a bit spooked with the coincidence of the boy’s birthday. They were both glad of the diversion.

The dog’s tails banging on the carpet marked her return. She carried a white metallic tray with painted roses. On it a tall clay coloured coffee pot and matching cups wobbled into view. Lonie held open the door. As she shimmed to put the tray down a hint of perfume caught on his throat and he noticed there was no biscuits on the tray and what a nice figure she had.

Lonie lit another fag as she poured coffee for both of them. The ritual brought a kind of intimacy.

‘So what do you want to know about Henry? She sipped at her coffee and her thick eyelashes blinked at him.

Lonie thought she’d the most amazing eyes. ‘Henry?’

‘My son.’ She quickly corrected him, a note of disgruntlement entered her voice, but she quickly corrected it with an encouraging smile.

‘Well, we were thinkin’ of doin’ a feature.’ Lonie gulped down some hot coffee. ‘Ah was just wonderin…’ He sniffed and took a drag on his fag and started again. ‘Ah was just wonderin’ if Henry had anyone special in his life?’ The words sat between them like a cold slab of marble.

‘Special?’ An ugly frown made her face seem waspish and she gave him a hard stare. Her body shifted in the chair and hands cupped her cup of coffee and there was a softening. ‘Well, I suppose apart from myself and my husband –we’re divorced now, of course – he had a friend, that poor boy that was also killed Archie Ramsay.’

Lonie choked on his coffee and the cup clattered onto the plate spilling some coffee on the table. He mopped at it with the tail end of his coat to stop it spilling onto the carpet, which seemed to amuse her. ‘You said he knew Archie Ramsay?’

‘Yes. That was his boyfriend.’

‘You mean, as in boyfriend, or just a friend that was also a boy?’ Lonie studied her. She sat straight as a whip and he was quite sure she meant the former, but he had to check.

‘Yes. My son was homosexual.’ She poured herself some more coffee and leaned across and poured Lonie a cup too. ‘He was a very precocious child. Quite brilliant. And also quite determined. He made no secret of the fact he liked boys. Aged six he told me he was going to marry Elvis Presley.’ She smiled at the thought. ‘That other boy was very beautiful too.’

‘You’d met him? Archie Ramsay?’

‘Oh yes. I thought you knew that.’ She leaned across, one hand crossed over the other, as her neck angled to get a better look at his face. ‘That other reporter said I wasn’t to mention it at the trial, unless I was specifically asked. Of course I never was…’

‘Mr MacDonald?’

That seemed to settle her. She leaned back, picked up her coffee and took a sip. ‘Yes. He was such a nice man and such a great help. Couldn’t do enough for us.’

Lonie didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one little bit. Some force was pushing him in one direction and pulling him in another. That wasn’t the way his world worked. He took a sip of coffee to fortify himself and decided to shake it up a bit. ‘What about Chief Inspector Bisset?’

‘What about him?’ She sipped her coffee and shrugged, but her bum wriggled in the chair.

‘Did you meet him?’ Lonie figured there was something she wasn’t telling him.

‘I thought you knew that.’ She looked at the dogs through the glass panel and smiled at them. Their tails whacked against the carpet. They got up and sniffed the air, before settling in the same spot. ‘Chief Inspector Bisset wasn’t very pleasant,’ she finally admitted.

‘In what way?’

‘Oh,’ there was a dreamy quality in the way she looked at him now and the way she spoke. ‘It seems he caught Henry and Archie smoking the wacky-backy, threatened to take them the whole way. Henry was a straight- A student, but would never in the world of Sundays have got his place in medical school.’ Her eyes urged Lonie to understand what a tragedy that would have been.

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, there was quite a stushie between my husband and me. Chief Inspector Bisset threatened to arrest both of us for a breach of the peace. I’ve never heard such foul language. He wasn’t a Chief Inspector then, of course, just an ordinary Sergeant. Then my husband phoned someone. I thought it might have been our lawyer, but the next thing my husband handed Seargent Bisset the phone. That settled him down a bit. Later your Mr MacDonald turned up.’ A smile shaped her mouth and sharpened her recollection. ‘He was very nice. Cloistered himself with my husband and Seargent Bisset in here. Smoothed things out. Told me there wouldn’t be any charges, winked at me and said “boys will be boys.”’

Lonie banged his coffee cup down. ‘Whit did you agree to in return?’

Mrs Cameron laughed. ‘Oh, nothing much. Henry had to agree not to see Archie again. Sergeant Bisset was quite insistent on that. And to tell you the truth my husband didn’t like the boy either. Thought he was holding Henry back.’

‘And what did Henry think?’ Lonie bit at his thumbnail.

The cup in her hand clinked as it was carefully placed down on the saucer. ‘I’ve already told you Henry was a very determined boy. He didn’t listen to anyone. He thought it was all rot, and he was determined to continue seeing Archie, with or without our permission.’

‘And did he?’

‘Oh, yes. He was in love.’

‘How did he take it then when Archie was murdered?’ Lonie fidgeted in his chair and, as he waited for her to answer, snatched up his fag packet.

‘I think you’re getting this the wrong way round. Henry was the first boy to go missing not Archie.’ She looked at him and her face was set angular and hard as basalt rock. ‘And let’s get one thing straight my son has not been murdered. He’s simply missing…I’d like you to leave now.’

Lonie reached for his coat. ‘One more question?’

She stood up, guarding his exit. The other side of the door from them the dogs stood up too. One of them seemed to yawn. ‘Yes?’

Lonie put his wet coat over his arm. ‘How did your son get to know Carol Peters?’

Mrs Cameron pulled open the dining room door letting the dogs in to splash about his feet, to be petted. ‘My son didn’t know Carol Peters! As far as I’m aware he’d never met the woman.’

Lonie thought he’d be licked to death. If he’d a tail he’d have wagged it too. His playing with the dogs let him ask another question and softened her attitude. ‘Why wasn’t this brought up at the trial?’

She stood statuesque for a few seconds frozen in a secret place. ‘I don’t know. It was a bit of a circus at the time. I was never asked and I was just glad to get away. I hated being away from here in case Henry returned and I wasn’t in.’