A Darker Domain

‘The guy in the photo?’

‘Aye. Andy Kerr. He was a union official. But he was on the sick from his work. Stress, they said. And they were right. He’d killed himself within the month. I often thought Mick going scabbing was the last straw for Andy. He worshipped Mick. It would have broken his heart.’

‘So that’s where you assumed he was?’ Karen prompted her.

‘That’s right. He had a cottage out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere. He said he liked the peace and quiet. Mick took me out there one time. It gave me the heebie jeebies. It was like the witch’s house in one of Misha’s fairy stories - there was no sign of it till suddenly you were there, right in front of it. You wouldn’t catch me living there.’

‘Could you not have phoned to check?’ the Mint butted in. Both women stared at him with a mixture of amusement and indulgence.

‘Our phone had been cut off months before, son,’ Jenny said, exchanging a look with Karen. ‘And this was long before mobiles.’

By now, Karen was gagging for a cup of tea, but she was damned if she was going to put herself in Jenny Prentice’s debt. She cleared her throat and continued. ‘When did you start to worry?’

‘When the bairn woke me up in the morning and he still wasn’t home. He’d never done that before. It wasn’t as if we’d had a proper row on the Friday. Just a few cross words. We’d had worse, believe me. When he wasn’t there in the morning, I really started to think there was something badly wrong.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I got Misha fed and dressed and took her down to her pal Lauren’s house. Then walked out through the woods to Andy’s place. But there was nobody there. And then I remembered Mick had said that now he was on the sick, Andy was maybe going to go off up to the Highlands for a few days. Get away from it all. Get his head straight. So of course he wasn’t there. And by then, I was really starting to get scared. What if there had been an accident? What if he’d been taken ill?’ The memory still had the power to disturb Jenny. Her fingers picked endlessly at the hem of her overall.

‘I went up to the Welfare to see the union reps. I figured if anybody knew where Mick was, it would be them. Or at least they’d know where to start looking.’ She stared down at the floor, her hands clasped tight in her lap. ‘That’s when the wheels really started to come off my life.’

Saturday 15th December 1984; Newton of Wemyss

Even in the morning, without the press of bodies to raise the temperature, the Miners’ Welfare Institute was warmer than her house, Jenny noticed as she walked in. Not by much, but enough to be perceptible. It wasn’t the sort of thing that usually caught her attention but today she was trying to think of anything except the absence of her husband. She stood hesitant for a moment in the entrance hall, trying to decide where to go. The NUM strike offices were upstairs, she vaguely remembered, so she made for the ornately carved staircase. On the first-floor landing, it all became much easier. All she had to do was to follow the low mutter of voices and the high thin layer of cigarette smoke.

A few yards down the hall, a door was cracked ajar, the source of the sound and the smell. Jenny tapped nervously and the room went quiet. At last, a cautious voice said, ‘Come in.’

She slid round the door like a church mouse. The room was dominated by a U-shaped table covered in tartan oilcloth. Half a dozen men were slouched around it in varying states of despondency. Jenny faltered when she realized the man at the top corner was someone she recognized but did not know. Mick McGahey, former Communist, leader of the Scottish miners. The only man, it was said, who could stand up to King Arthur and make his voice heard. The man who had been deliberately kept from the top spot by his predecessor. If Jenny had a pound for every time she’d heard someone say how different it would have been if McGahey had been in charge, her family would have been the best-fed and best-dressed in Newton of Wemyss. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered. ‘I just wanted a word…’ Her eyes flickered round the room, wondering which of the men she knew would be best to focus on.

‘It’s all right, Jenny,’ Ben Reekie said. ‘We were just having a wee meeting. We’re pretty much done here, eh, lads?’ There was a discontented murmur of agreement. But Reekie, the local secretary, was good at taking the temperature of a meeting and moving things along. ‘So, Jenny, how can we help you?’

She wished they were alone, but didn’t have the nerve to ask for it. The women had learned a lot in the process of supporting their men, but face to face their assertiveness still tended to melt away. But it would be all right, she told herself. She’d lived in this cocooned world all her adult life, a world that centred on the pit and the Welfare, where there were no secrets and the union was your mother and your father. ‘I’m worried about Mick,’ she said. No point in beating about the bush. ‘He went out yesterday morning and never came back. I was wondering if maybe…?’

Reekie rested his forehead on his fingers, rubbing it so hard he left alternating patches of white and red across the centre. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he hissed from between clenched teeth.

‘And you expect us to believe you don’t know where he is?’ The accusation came from Ezra Macafferty, the village’s last survivor of the lock-outs and strikes of the 1920s.

‘Of course I don’t know where he is.’ Jenny’s voice was plaintive, but a dark fear had begun to spread its chill across her chest. ‘I thought maybe he’d been in here. I thought somebody might know.’

‘That makes six,’ McGahey said. She recognized the rough deep rumble of his voice from TV interviews and open-air rallies. It felt strange to be in the same room with it.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Six what? What’s going on?’ Their eyes were all on her, boring into her. She could feel their contempt but didn’t understand what it was for. ‘Has something happened to Mick? Has there been an accident?’

‘Something’s happened, all right,’ McGahey said. ‘It looks like your man’s away scabbing to Nottingham.’

His words seemed to suck the air from her lungs. She stopped breathing, letting a bubble form round her so the words would bounce off. It couldn’t be right. Not Mick. Dumb, she shook her head hard. The words started to seep back in but they still made no sense. ‘Knew about the five…thought there might be more…always a traitor in the ranks…disappointed…always a union man.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘How else do you explain him not being here?’ Reekie said. ‘You’re the one that came to us looking for him. We know a van load went down last night. And at least one of them is a pal of your Mick. Where the hell else is he going to be?’

Thursday 28th June 2007; Newton of Wemyss

‘I couldn’t have felt worse if they’d accused me of being a whore,’ Jenny said. ‘I suppose, in their eyes, that’s exactly what I was. My man away scabbing, it would be no time at all before I’d be living on immoral earnings.’

‘You never doubted that they were right?’

Jenny pushed her hair back from her face, momentarily stripping away some of the years and the docility. ‘Not really. Mick was pals with Iain Maclean, one of the ones that went to Nottingham. I couldn’t argue with that. And don’t forget what it was like back then. The men ran the game and the union ran the men. When the women wanted to take part in the strike, the first battle we had to fight was against the union. We had to beg them to let us join in. They wanted us where we’d always been - in the back room, keeping the home fires burning. Not standing by the braziers on the picket lines. But even though we got Women Against Pit Closures off the ground, we still knew our place. You’d have to be bloody strong or bloody stupid to try and blow against the wind round here.’

It wasn’t the first time Karen had heard a version of this truth. She wondered whether she’d have done any better in the same position. It felt good to think she’d stand by her man a bit more sturdily. But in the face of the community hostility Jenny Prentice must have faced, Karen reckoned she’d probably have caved in too. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘But now that it looks like Mick might not have gone scabbing after all, have you got any idea what might have happened to him?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘Not a scooby. Even though I couldn’t believe it, the scabbing kind of made sense. So I never thought about any other possibility.’

‘Do you think he’d just had enough? Just upped and left?’

She frowned. ‘See, that wouldn’t be like Mick. To leave without the last word? I don’t think so. He’d have made sure I knew it was all my fault.’ She gave a bitter laugh.

‘You don’t think he might have gone without a word as a way of making you suffer even more?’

Jenny’s head reared back. ‘That’s sick,’ she protested. ‘You make him sound like some kind of a sadist. He wasn’t a cruel man, Inspector. Just thoughtless and selfish like the rest of them.’

Karen paused for a moment. This was always the hardest part when interviewing the relatives of the missing. ‘Had he fallen out with anybody? Did he have any enemies, Jenny?’

Jenny looked as if Karen had suddenly switched into Urdu. ‘Enemies? You mean, like somebody that would kill him?’

‘Maybe not mean to kill him. Maybe just fight him?’

This time, Jenny’s laugh had genuine warmth. ‘By Christ, that’s funny coming from you.’ She shook her head. ‘The only physical fights Mick ever got into in all the years we were married were with your lot. On the picket lines. At the demonstrations. Did he have enemies? Aye, the thin blue line. But this isn’t South America, and I don’t recall any talk about the disappeared of the miners’ strike. So the answer to your question is no, he didn’t have the kind of enemies that he’d get into a fight with.’

Karen studied the carpet for a long moment. The gung-ho violence of the police against the strikers had poisoned community relationships for a generation or more. Never mind that the worst offenders came from outside forces, bussed in to make up the numbers and paid obscene amounts of overtime to oppress their fellow citizens in ways most people chose to avoid knowing about. The fallout from their ignorance and arrogance affected every officer in every coalfield force. Still did, Karen reckoned. She took a deep breath and looked up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘The way they treated the miners, it was inexcusable. I like to think we wouldn’t act like that now, but I’m probably wrong. Are you sure there wasn’t anybody he’d had a run-in with?’

Jenny didn’t even pause for thought. ‘Not that I knew about. He wasn’t a troublemaker. He had his principles, but he didn’t use them as excuses to pick fights. He stood up for what he believed in, but he was a talker, not a fighter.’

‘What if the talking didn’t work? Would he back down?’

‘I’m not sure I follow you.’

Karen spoke slowly, feeling her way into the idea. ‘I’m wondering if he bumped into this Iain Maclean that day and tried to talk him out of going to Nottingham. And if Iain wouldn’t change his mind, and maybe had his pals there to back him up…Would Mick have got into a fight with them, maybe?’

Jenny shook her head firmly. ‘No way. He’d have said his piece and, if that didn’t work, he’d have walked away.’

Karen felt frustrated. Even after the passage of so much time, cold cases usually provided one or two loose ends to pick away at. But so far, there seemed to be nothing to reach for here. One last question, then she was out of this place. ‘Do you have any idea at all where Mick might have gone painting that day?’

‘He never said. The only thing I can tell you is that in the winter he often went along the shore to East Wemyss. That way, if it came on rain, he could go down to the caves and shelter there. The preservation group, they had a wee bothy at the back of one of the caves with a camping stove where they could brew up. He had keys, he could make himself right at home,’ she added, the acid back in her voice. ‘But I’ve no idea whether he was there that day or not. He could have been anywhere between Dysart and Buckhaven.’ She looked at her watch. ‘That’s all I know.’

Karen got to her feet. ‘I appreciate your time, Mrs Prentice. We will be continuing our inquiries and I’ll keep you informed.’ The Mint scrambled to his feet and followed her and Jenny to the front door.

‘I’m not bothered for myself, you understand,’ Jenny said when they were halfway down the path. ‘But see if you can find him for the bairn’s sake.’