North Sea Requiem Read Online Free Page B

run in the newspaper for a second week because Don McLeod wanted to string it out as long as possible. Him being a shinty man and the town team the archrival of his beloved Skye team, skullduggery involving rivals he welcomed greatly. The theories as to what had happened were as convoluted as a paperback thriller. And as far-fetched as a faerie story. He loved a story that gave him plenty of opportunities for a good headline.
    When the phone went for the fifth time in half an hour, Rob answered, “Highland Hauntings, how may we help?”
    â€œRob, it’s Frankie. Listen. My mother has gone spare about the story in the paper. So many folk have been teasing her about it, she’s likely to strangle Hector. She blames him for all the gossip about her finding the leg.”
    â€œNothing could stop the story getting out. Even in shinty circles, this is bizarre.”
    â€œI know, but can you leave her name out o’ it if the story runs next week? And warn Hector to hide if she sees him. Thanks, Rob.”
    Rob remembered Frankie’s mother best from hisprimary-school days. Children and teachers throughout the town knew her as Nurse Urquhart, the Nit Nurse. That she took children’s height and weight and checked their general health besides looking for nits was overlooked. And the shame of a letter home pronouncing that you had the wee beasties haunted many a child for the rest of their lives.
    It was Joanne who had interviewed her. Mostly Rob interviewed men, Joanne women, though she occasionally thought it should be reversed, Rob being so good with females and her getting on well with men.
    â€œWhen I saw it, I knew it was no’ a fresh leg,” Nurse Urquhart told Joanne, “so I knew it had to be a sick joke. Those shinty lads can be a wee bit wild sometimes, and they’re aye joking about Frank—ma husband, how he faints at the sight o’ blood.
    â€œNo,” she said to Joanne, “I’ve no idea how the leg came to be in the washing.
    â€œAye,” she continued, “I’ve racked ma brains, and all I can think is it was some o’ the lads thinking it would be a laugh.
    â€œNo, we’ve no enemies,” she answered. “Shinty folk are right friendly off the field.”
    Joanne accepted her story, but there was something, she thought later, something in the way Mrs. Urquhart’s hands fidgeted with an invisible piece of knitting as she sat in the armchair by the fireplace with a cup of tea untouched on the nest of side tables.
    But finding a severed leg in the washing is enough to make anyone nervous, Joanne reasoned.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Another edition of the Gazette came out, and the story was once more dissected and discussed, and argued over. Then one bright spark, a player on the Beauly shinty team, thinking to stir him up, asked his uncle, a gravedigger at Tomnahurich cemetery, if he had lost a body, or a body part.
    His uncle was furious, denying that anything had ever gone missing on his watch. Then Double Donald, as he was known, remembered the earth on a fresh grave being disturbed, but not obviously so, when he had come to work the previous Monday morning.
    So he, Donald Donaldson, phoned Sergeant Patience and asked him to come over but begged that it be kept quiet. Having made the request after he told his story, and after he had shown the sergeant the grave in question, he realized there was no chance of the matter being hushed up.
    What Double Donald didn’t mention was that this funeral on that Thursday afternoon was late, due to some problems with the widow fainting and generally behaving with no decorum.
    Hysterics; a sure sign that she didn’t give a damn for her husband, Double Donald always thought.
    It was getting dark by the time the mourners left, and the pile of earth was almost frozen—the temperature not much above freezing all day. His feet were numb, his hands even colder, and Brian,