Death of a Witch

by M C Beaton

  Hamish at last rose. He turned in the doorway. Fergus was studying a TV guide. “Man, there’s American football on tonight,” he crowed.

  There’s a man who looks as if he’s just been let out of prison rather than having lost a wife, thought Hamish.

  Chapter Five

  Kissing don’t last! Cookery do.

  —George Meredith

  Hamish was surprised when he returned to the police station to find not one single hectoring message from Blair on his answering service. Then he decided that it was because the chief detective inspector wanted to keep both murder cases firmly to himself.

  Jimmy came in after him without knocking and sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh.

  “What a day!”

  “Got any background on Catriona?”

  “A bit. She was married to a Rory McBride, crofter of Inverness. Maiden name was Catriona Burrell.”

  “On the police records?”

  “Nearly but not quite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gimme a whisky and I’ll tell you.”

  “One of these days,” said Hamish, lifting down a bottle of whisky from a kitchen cupboard, “Blair’s going to die of acute alcoholism and you’ll find a hellfire teetotaller is your new boss. Probably a woman. And she’ll have you in rehab as fast as anything.”

  “When Blair pushes off, I’ll get his job. I’m practising my funny handshake already.”

  “You’re never going to join the Masons!”

  “If it was good enough for Rabbie Burns, it’s good enough for me. Just joking.”

  “So,” said Hamish as Jimmy took a first gulp of whisky, “tell me what you meant about Catriona.”

  “She was in Drumnadrochit not long after her separation, right down at the end of Loch Ness. Police got a rumour she was pushing drugs—Ecstasy. Two detectives got a search warrant and went along. One of them phones in to say they’ve found a stash of the stuff and they’re bringing her in. An hour later, the other one phones back and said they’d made a mistake and there were no drugs in the cottage at all.”

  “Who are these detectives?”

  “Detective Sergeant Paul Simmonds and Detective Constable Peter Lyon.”

  “Odd.”

  “Wait a bit. There’s more. You’re going to love this. Although the cottage is a bit isolated, folks walking back to the local hotel said they heard the noise of a party going on. Lights shining, music blaring. Then two men staggered out and one shouts back, ‘See you soon, Catriona.’ The men answered the descriptions of the two detectives. A waitress at the hotel was walking to her evening shift as well. Evidently her husband had been visiting Catriona and she was jealous. So she phoned it in. More police were sent but there wasn’t a drug to be found although they took that cottage apart. Shortly after that, Catriona disappeared.”

  “And what happened to the detectives?”

  “Suspended from duty pending an enquiry. Nothing found against them. Simmonds is now working as a security guard in Glasgow and Lyon got a transfer to Edinburgh.”

  “She could hardly have had much custom to peddle drugs in a wee place like Drumnadrochit,” said Hamish.

  “There was a rumour she had been seen at a couple of the clubs in Inverness. I’m telling you, Hamish. Wi’ a woman like that, anyone out of her past could have had it in for her.”

  “I hope it is someone from her past,” said Hamish.

  “What’s this? You’ve cracked at last and think one of your precious peasants could be a murderer?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  After Jimmy had left, Hamish was wondering what to eat. He had frozen food in the freezer out in the shed in the garden but he didn’t feel like defrosting anything. There was a knock at the door.

  He was half tempted to ignore it, fearing Blair had decided that some Hamish baiting was called for, but after a short hesitation, he opened it and found Lesley on the doorstep carrying a large pot.

  She seemed almost shy, and avoiding his gaze she said, “I made too much beef stew and I wondered if you would like some.”

  “Bring it in,” said Hamish. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then we’ll have our dinner together. The stove’s hot. Just put the pot on top.”

  “Right. I’ve got some wine in the car.”

  “Now, is this wise?” Hamish asked Lugs. “But that stew smells wonderful.” Lesley came back brandishing a bottle, which she put on the table. Hamish helped her off with her coat. She was wearing a lime-green woollen dress that clung to her ample curves.

  “So how are things going?” asked Hamish.

  She pulled a flowered pinafore out of her capacious handbag and put it on. She went to the stove and began to stir the stew. When did I last see a woman under sixty in a pinafore? wondered Hamish. And oh, the aroma on that stew! Was anything ever more seductive than a curvaceous woman in a pinny bent over a stove?

  “As you’ve probably already been told, the weapon used was something very thin and sharp. Although she was wearing a tweed coat, it would not take all that much force. It was driven straight through her back and pierced her heart.”

  “But could she have gone on walking after being stabbed?”

  “Not in this case. I think she died instantly and in the shop. I gather the thick fog is the trouble. Someone could easily have followed her in and got out again quickly and the fact that Patel was asleep was a bonus.”

  “But why her?” asked Hamish, laying out plates, knives, and forks and then searching for wineglasses. “I can understand someone wanting to kill Catriona. She seems to have been a right evil woman.”

  “Say this Ina Braid knew something and had to be silenced,” suggested Lesley. “The stew’s hot enough. Pass me the plates.”

  “I don’t like that idea,” said Hamish. “Not a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “If Catriona was murdered by someone from her past, he wouldn’t hang around the village. Your idea makes it look like someone local.”

  Lesley dished out the stew and they ate in silence, Hamish relishing every delicious morsel.

  When they had finished eating, she collected the plates and put them in the sink. “Back in a minute,” she said. “I’ve got the dessert and coffee in the car.”

  Refusing Hamish’s offer of help, she went out and then returned carrying a cheesecake on a plate and a thermos of coffee.

  “You’re spoiling me, lassie,” said Hamish.

  “It’s the least I can do after that meal you bought me,” said Lesley. “My God! What’s that?”

  Sonsie appeared in the kitchen and stood glaring.

  “Oh, that’s my cat. Nothing to worry about. Yes, it’s a wild cat. Harmless.”

  Lugs came back into the kitchen and sat beside the cat.

  “There’s some stew left,” said Lesley. “Do you think they would like some?”

  “I’m sure they would.”

  Lesley filled up the animals’ feed bowls with stew. How pretty she looks, thought Hamish, mellowed with food and wine.

  “What made you want to be a policeman in a remote place like this?” asked Lesley. “And I’ve heard gossip about how you keep sidestepping promotion.”

  “It goes a long way back,” said Hamish. “I was a lad in my early teens. Patel’s shop was a greengrocers then but it was going bust. Not much call for fresh vegetables in Lochdubh and folk grew pretty much all they needed. So the owner was selling everything off cheap. My mother drove me over. It was a scorching hot summer day and we only had an ancient Land Rover with a cracked radiator and we had to keep stopping on the road to fill it up with water.

  “My mother bought a lot of stuff and we loaded it in the Land Rover. Then she said she would go and visit a friend. I said I’d stay and look at the boats in the harbour. She gave me a couple of pounds and told me that the greengrocers was selling off boxes of plums at a pound each. She’d decided to buy some after all. She suddenly wanted to make
plum jam. So she gave me the car keys and told me to buy a couple of boxes.

  “She had just gone when an ice cream van came along the waterfront. I was so hot and thirsty and I craved an ice cream. I bought a large one and hid the change in my shoe.

  “I was sure she would understand but when she came back and started talking about all the plum jam she was going to make, I panicked and lied. I knew we were pretty poor and we weren’t allowed luxuries like ice cream. I said two youths had attacked me and taken the money.”

  Hamish sighed. “It was misery. She marched me to this police station. It was a Constable McWhirter, a big slow-moving highlander. I told my story and he just sat there, studying my face. Then he said, ‘Take off your shoes, laddie.’

  “I blustered and argued but I had to take my shoes off. He shook them and the change came rattling out. My mother gave me a tongue lashing but McWhirter said, ‘I think the lad has learned a good lesson. Crime doesn’t pay. I swear he’ll never do anything like that again.’

  “That policeman seemed like God to me, and I loved Lochdubh. As soon as I left school, I went through police academy and got a job in Strathbane. But as soon as I heard that after McWhirter had died, they had trouble finding anyone for the job up here, I volunteered. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else. What about you? Why forsensics?”

  “I’ve always been fascinated by forensic science. But that was what broke up my marriage. I was working for Strathclyde and there was an enormous workload. I was hardly ever home. He said it was either the job or him, not both. I chose the job.”

  “But why Strathbane?”

  “I was silly enough to have an affair with a colleague. It got messy. I had to get out. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  There was a long silence. She poured them cups of coffee from a thermos.

  “It’s frustrating,” said Hamish at last.

  “What is?”

  “Being out of the loop. Not having all the facts as they come in.”

  “That was your choice, remember?”

  “Aye, I suppose I want to run the case without the responsibility of rank,” said Hamish.

  While they finished their coffee, Hamish wondered what he was supposed to do now. Invite her to stay the night?

  But she suddenly stood up. She said abruptly, “I’ll call back sometime for the cheesecake plate and the stew pot. I’ll take the thermos because I use that for work. Good night.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Hamish, uncoiling his long legs from under the table. “This has been a fabulous meal. I must take you out for dinner.”

  “I’ll phone you,” said Lesley, and with that she fled out the door.

  Hamish scratched his fiery hair. His animals looked sleepily up at him.

  “What brought that on?” said Hamish.

  Lesley got into her car and drove off. A slight wind was shifting the fog into bewildering pillars of mist floating in front of the car. “Fool!” she told herself. “He may be attractive but you’re not destined to spend the rest of your life stuck in a highland police station.”

  In the Highlands of Sutherland it’s possible to get three climates in one day. When Hamish arose the following morning it was to find the fog had cleared, leaving a damp, warm blustery day with choppy waves on the loch and a feeling almost of spring in the air. But he knew from experience that it could be freezing again by the evening.

  He cleaned up the dishes from the night before, putting the stew pot and the dessert dish to one side to return to Lesley.

  Hamish went along in the direction of the mobile police unit and then backed off. A line of villagers, all men, were queuing up outside.

  He stopped a Strathbane policeman who was moodily smoking a cigarette and staring at the water.

  “What’s happening?” asked Hamish.

  “The boss is getting the DNA off all the men in this village,” said the policeman. His accent had the fluting sound of the Outer Hebrides.

  “That won’t do him any good,” said Hamish. “As far as I know no DNA was recovered from the scene.”

  “Aye, well, they are going to look at the DNA database.”

  “Why didn’t they ask me?” asked Hamish. “I could have told them no one in this village has a criminal record.”

  The policeman tossed his cigarette butt onto the beach. “I had best be getting on. But I’m right sick o’ chapping at doors and asking hard-faced wifies what their man was doing when that Braid woman was getting herself killt.”

  Hamish stood, irresolute. Before, Blair would have been shouting at him to do something or other. But he had no instructions. This time Blair seemed determined to keep him right out of the case.

  He took out his phone and called Jimmy. “Can you speak?”

  “I’m at headquarters making calls.”

  “Can you tell me where Paul Simmonds is working in Glasgow?”

  “You can’t go there, Hamish. Your expenses wouldn’t be paid. Besides, you’d be seen as poaching on Strathclyde’s police territory.”

  “Would I do a thing like that? Chust for interest.”

  “Oh, well, he’s working at Wylie’s, a big sort of Harrods-type store in Buchanan Street.”

  Hamish told his pets to look after themselves. He felt he didn’t dare inflict them on Angela again. He drove rapidly to Inverness airport and caught the shuttle to Glasgow. He had changed into civilian clothes.

  Glasgow was freezing cold. The balmy air, blessing Sutherland when he left, had not reached south.

  Hamish shivered his way along Buchanan Street until he came to Wylie’s.

  A member of the staff informed him that the security guard was off on his coffee break and could be found in the shop’s café in the basement.

  The café was quiet, but Hamish spotted a middle-aged man in dark blue coveralls with a badge proclaiming security on the front. Paul Simmonds was small for an ex-detective and plump, with a discontented face covered in red veins. His eyes were faded blue and watery.

  Hamish sat down opposite him and introduced himself.

  “What now?” snarled Simmonds. “If it’s about that woman what got murdered, I’ve answered all the police questions I’m going to answer.”

  “Come on,” coaxed Hamish. “This is unofficial. I’m not out to blame you for anything. I want to know what the woman last calling herself Catriona was like.”

  Paul stared into his coffee cup. Then he raised his head. “You’re not wearing a wire, are you?”

  “I’m here at my own expense and my boss would kill me if he found out.”

  “You’re that Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh, aren’t you?”

  “The same.”

  “Well, I’ve heard nothing but good about you. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. I’m out of the force. I think she really was a witch. Yes. We had her bang to rights. Found a bag of Ecstasy tablets. I phoned over the find. She didn’t seem the least put out. Just smiled and said, ‘Let’s drink to success.’ It was a bottle of twelve-year-old malt. I was all for hauling her off but Peter said it wouldn’t hurt to have just the one drink. I don’t know what was in that drink but I suddenly felt happier than I’d done in my whole life. The fire was crackling on the hearth and the room was cosy what with the wind howling outside down the loch.

  “Suddenly she looked beautiful. ‘We’ll have a party!’ she cried, and somehow there we were singing and dancing. It was all a blur. Then she kissed us both good night, and when we were halfway to Inverness we came to our senses and searched for the evidence. It was gone and in that moment, we realised we hadn’t even arrested her. We went back but the place was in darkness and she didn’t answer the door. We tried to break it down because we still had the warrant, but the door was too tough for us and man, we were still drunk and shaky.

  “Then came the enquiry. They cleared us of any wrongdoing but it was on our records and we knew we’d never get any promotion after that. I’m right glad she’s dead and I hope she suffered.”

>   “And was she using her maiden name of Catriona Burrell?”

  “Yes. Look, if you catch whoever killed her, shake his hand from me.”

  “When you were searching the house for drugs, can you remember anything else, letters, postcards, photos, things like that?”

  “Let me think. I know, Peter picked up a framed photograph and says, ‘Do you think her man’s still around?’ I only had a wee keek at it, mind, but it was of a big strong fellow and written at the bottom was from your loving husband, rory.”

  “That’s grand,” said Hamish. “Anything else?”

  He sat for a few minutes in thought. Then a voice from the tanoy barked, “Security guard, report to the main entrance.”

  Hamish handed over his card. “If you remember anything at all, phone me.”

  Simmonds got to his feet. “I ’member now. Behind the fellow was a view of a harbour. It looked like Oban.”

  When Hamish reached Inverness airport, before getting into his old car, he phoned Mr. Johnson at the Tommel Castle Hotel. “Do me a favour,” said Hamish. “If Blair phones you, tell him I was up at the hotel all day checking on the guests.”

  Mr. Johnson agreed. Hamish drove off towards Lochdubh, feeling that at least he had covered himself in case the erratic Blair had suddenly decided to hound him.

  As he drove back, he turned over in his mind what Simmonds had said. If Catriona had married this Rory, then it might be worthwhile to go to Oban and look for a Rory McBride.

  Jimmy Anderson was waiting for him. “I thought you might be back soon. Have you anything for me because I’m right tired of getting nowhere.”

  Hamish led him into the kitchen and told him what he had found out.

  “I thought,” said Hamish, “if you’d cover for me, I might take a run over to Oban in the morning and see what I can find out.”

  “I’ll think of something if there’s any whisky left.”

  “One, Jimmy, only one. I don’t want you to be done for drunk driving.”