The Ghost of Helen Addison by Charles E. McGarry

Author:Charles E. McGarry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857909336
Publisher: Birlinn

21

THE brief sunset was intense, casting Ben Corrach in the most vivid garnet. The entire Munro glowed in the most extraordinary way, like a colossal ember. Leo felt a mixture of unpleasant emotions as he sat in the lounge, morosely chasing a large J&B with a glass of Irish stout. Further down the bar Lex Dreghorn kept a safe distance, sensing that he would not be made welcome in the Glaswegian’s company. Leo had been rather curt in response to George Rattray’s couthy anglers’ humour, and the fishing enthusiast seemed to take the hint and sauntered over to where Shona Minto had arrived, perching herself on the other side of the bar like Queen Bee, turning not a stroke of work. She laughed affectedly at Rattray’s sycophantic chatter. By now Leo reckoned – correctly – that the locals had an inkling as to his purpose at Loch Dhonn. If they had not become aware of his mystical abilities then they at least suspected that he was there in some form of investigative capacity. It was in the way he caught them regarding him, or now avoided engaging in conversation with him about the murder.

Part of Leo felt that he had intruded upon the Addisons’ grief, and that he had possessed no right to knock upon their door empty-handed, without so much as a clue as to who had brutally killed their beloved daughter. Another part of him felt a glimmer of the immensity of what the Addisons were enduring. He also felt a not entirely unfamiliar gnawing at the edge of his faith, such was the senseless and appalling nature of the crime.

Eventually, Fordyce joined him from the dining room; Leo had earlier turned down his suggestion that they dine together because he had no appetite. As far as Fordyce could tell, Leo was sober. If he had asked Paul the barman, a pleasant, conscientious fellow aged approximately twenty-five with the dark hair and handsome features typical of the Glasgow Irish, he would have discovered that his friend had already drunk his way through four pints of Guinness and two gills of Scotch. If he had asked Lex Dreghorn, he would doubtlessly have received a more modest and less truthful estimate, such was his preciousness at maintaining champion-drinker status in Loch Dhonn.

‘During a dark time,’ Leo confided to Fordyce, ‘when I was struggling to cope, I went to stay in a monastery for a while. As a guest, you understand. Looking back, it was there that I started to heal, within my soul. One of the monks there, this Brother Francesco, he was sort of my buddy, my consigliere. He had been a psychotherapist prior to taking Holy Orders. Anyway, one day we were chatting about where I was in my life and what I had been through, and he said something that I always remember. He said that God never asks more of us than we can endure. But looking into that poor woman’s eyes today and seeing nothing but desolation, it made me truly wonder.

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