by M C Beaton
“Never mind, Hamish. You should travel more. Maybe meet a nice girl.”
“Angela, I went to Spain, mind? And I was stuck in an hotel wi’ a bundle o’ geriatrics. I’ve never been so popular wi’ the opposite sex in my life.”
“You can’t write off foreign travel just because of one unlucky holiday.”
“I’ll see. Thanks for the whisky.”
When Hamish left, the snow was still falling but it had a dampish sleety feel. He made supper for himself and his pets, cooking on top of the stove by gaslight and then, carrying a lamp into the bedroom, undressed and got into bed. He read a detective story until his eyes began to droop, so he turned out the gas lamp and went to sleep.
He was awakened in the morning by a loud thump as melting snow fell off the roof.
Hamish got dressed and went outside. The wind had shifted around to the west and was blowing mild air in from the Gulf Stream. Everything glittered in the morning sun, and the air was full of the sound of running water.
He got a shovel out of the shed and began to clear a path from the kitchen door. By midday the electricity had come on again and the phone was operating.
In the afternoon he called in at Patel’s, bought a bag of groceries, and headed up the hill to Angus Macdonald’s cottage.
“I knew you would call today,” said Angus, graciously accepting the provisions.
“Saw it in your crystal ball, did you?” asked Hamish.
“Sit down. I’ll just be putting this stuff away.”
“Any chance of a coffee?”
“Aye.”
Hamish sat by the smouldering peat fire. Angus had not bothered to go through his usual performance of hanging the blackened kettle over the fire to boil. That was all part of his act as an Olden Tymes seer, and he couldn’t be bothered wasting it on Hamish.
Angus came back from the kitchen and handed Hamish a mug of coffee. Hamish took a sip and made a face. “This is dreadful stuff, Angus.”
“Is it now. It was yourself who gave me a jar of that last year.”
“I remember,” said Hamish. “It was one of Patel’s special offers. I came to see how you were doing, Angus, but you seem to be fine.”
“I’m all right but it iss yourself you ought to be worrying about.”
“Why?”
“There were these two men seen up on the mountain yesterday.”
“Angela told me about them. Climbers.”
“I closed my eyes,” crooned Angus, “and I saw evil.”
Hamish knew that Angus had a very powerful telescope.
“What did you see?” he demanded.
“I saw they were carrying rifles. No climbing equipment.”
Hamish thought of the two escaped poachers.
“Well, they wouldn’t hang around up there in the blizzard,” he said. “Or with any luck, they’ve frozen to death.”
“Have a look in the bothy up the brae,” said Angus.
Hamish returned to the police station and collected a powerful torch, told his pets to stay where they were, and set off up the brae at the back and then to the lower slopes of the Two Sisters, the twin mountains that dominated Lochdubh.
The bothy, a shepherd’s hut, was at the top of a slope. Hamish struggled up through the soft melting snow, feeling his feet and trousers beginning to get wet.
He opened the door of the bothy and went in. There was a pan on the battered old stove in the corner with a few baked beans at the bottom. He shone the torch on the earthen floor, puddled with melting snow seeping into the ramshackle hut. There was a boot print in one corner and in another, a few empty cans.
His heart sank. He was sure somehow it was the poachers. Climbers usually tidied up after themselves.
He went outside and phoned Jimmy. “I think those poachers are back,” said Hamish. “They’ve been spotted up the back of Lochdubh. It’s dark now but I think if you send a squad over, we could get started first light.”
“Wait a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”
Hamish waited and waited. At last Jimmy came back on the line. “Can’t do anything, Hamish. There’s a big drug bust tomorrow and Blair says he needs all the men he can get.”
“But these men are armed!”
“All I can suggest is that you keep close to your station and don’t try to go after them yourself. Look, as soon as this drug business is over, I’ll come myself with as many men as I can get.”
The next day Hamish was determined not to let fear of the poachers trap him in his police station. Just in case they came calling at the station, he left the dog and cat with Angela, explaining that he did not want to return home and find them shot.
He debated whether to round up some of the local men to help him in the search but decided against it. If one of them got shot in the hunt, he would never forgive himself. He had phoned Jimmy again, who had said Blair still refused to send any men. With his deer rifle beside him, he set out, driving up and over the hills, stopping occasionally at croft houses to ask if anyone had seen the two men.
The weather was mild with the first hint of spring, and the snow was melting rapidly. Burns were in full spate, tumbling down the hillsides, their peaty gold water flashing in the sun.
He searched bothies and outhouses for any sign of where they might have spent the night. The bothy he was sure they had been staying in was deserted. He was glad when night fell, feeling always that the scope of a rifle held by someone up on the hills was trained on him.
Hamish phoned Jimmy and asked him to send over photographs of the two men. When they arrived, he printed copies of them and went out and stuck them up on the lampposts along the waterfront.
That evening he carried an armchair from his living room and set it against the kitchen door. Then he slept in it, fully dressed, with his rifle at his side. He awoke briefly during the night, feeling pins and needles in his legs.
By morning he felt dirty and gritty and he was in a foul mood. It was more than likely that the poachers were not after him but simply hiding out from the police.
Nonetheless, he went out searching again, without success. The sun was warm; it was as if the blizzards had never happened and all the misery that Catriona had brought to the village was rapidly disappearing in the clear light.
When he went back to the village and was making his way to Angela’s house to pick up his animals again he saw a rare sight. Archie Maclean and his wife were walking hand in hand along the waterfront. Other couples were strolling along either holding hands as well or with their arms around each other’s waists.
“What’s happening?” Hamish asked Angela when she answered the door to him. “Has romance come to Lochdubh or is there another witch around selling love potions?”
“It’s pretty awful. Haven’t you seen the newspaper? It’s that cursed Perry.”
Hamish followed her into the kitchen. She handed him a newspaper folded over at a feature and said, “Read that.”
The headline was enough for Hamish. we don’t do sex in lochdubh. Underneath was a smaller headline: was it frustrated sex that caused the lochdubh murders?
Hamish ran his eyes over the piece. It mentioned the fact that even the village constable was celibate.
The Currie sisters were quoted as saying, “We don’t go in for any nastiness like that round here.”
Hamish checked the other quotes, and his eyes narrowed. “There’s a lot wrong here, Angela. I have a feeling that he asked the Currie sisters, for example, if they went in for S and M in the village. He put down replies but omitted the questions.”
Hamish phoned Elspeth. When she came on the line, he said, “Thon was a malicious piece of writing from Perry.”
“Maybe it was because he was disappointed in love,” said Elspeth. “Fancied you, didn’t he?”
“Cut that out. Do you know if he taped those interviews?”
“He taped everything. He doesn’t know any shorthand.”
“Can you get me the tape?”
“He’d know it
was me if I took it.”
“Do you think he ever leaves it in his car?”
“I think he keeps it in the glove compartment when he’s not working.”
“So break into his car and pinch it. Pinch the car if necessary.”
“Why should I?”
Hamish took a deep breath. “This is a rotten malicious piece of reporting and you know it. Do you want someone like that on the staff?”
There was a long silence and then Elspeth said reluctantly, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Elspeth flicked through a notebook she kept in her desk with the names of various villains. Sonny Turner had recently finished doing time for stealing cars. She made a note of his address and after work made her way to a house in Clydebank.
Sonny recognised her as a reporter he had seen on the press benches in the high court and tried to close the door.
Elspeth put her foot in the door and held up a fifty-pound note. “I’m writing an article on car theft. I know you’re clean but I want a bit of advice.”
He nipped the note from her fingers and then opened the door wide.
“Come in, petal,” he said. “You’ve come tae the right man.”
Elspeth knew that Perry lived in a cul-de-sac off Great Western Road. She drove there at four in the morning. Perry’s BMW was parked on the road outside.
She crouched down by the car and assembled her kit—a wooden door wedge, a metal wire coat hanger, and a hammer.
Following Sonny’s instructions, she broke into the car. The alarm shrilled. With a beating heart she dived into the car and, as per instructions, locked the door, unlocked it, opened the door from the inside, and hit the kill switch on the underside of the dashboard.
The alarm fell silent. She peered up at the windows. Not a single light showed. People were used to faulty car alarms. She opened the glove compartment and seized Perry’s small tape recorder. Then to make it look like a real burglary, she took his radio and CD player as well.
She let herself out of the car, stuffed the stolen goods and her equipment back into a travel bag, and scurried off to where she had parked her own car.
Back in her own apartment, she switched on the tape recorder and ran it back to the Lochdubh interviews. It was as Hamish had expected. The Currie sisters were asked whether the women of the village liked to dress up as fantasy figures, nurses or little girls, to excite their husbands.
Mrs. Wellington had been asked if she ever wore leather in bed or had used a vibrator.
“The sexual practises you are talking about are filth,” Mrs. Wellington had said.
But her reply as published in the article had appeared as, “All sex is filth.”
The other interviews were on the same tricky lines. Various villagers had been asked about Hamish’s love life and the replies had been mostly the same—that he did not have a girlfriend at the moment. Nothing about him being celibate.
Elspeth felt the fury rise in her. Poor innocent Lochdubh, held up to ridicule.
Wearing the thin gloves she had donned for the burglary, she typed out a note to the news desk at Scottish Television and packed up the tape recorder and the original article.
She addressed the package and then drove to Scottish Television wearing an old motorcycle helmet and leathers from the days when she had used a motorbike. She studied herself in the mirror. Nobody could tell in her disguise whether she was a man or a woman.
Elspeth was sent to cover the high court the next day. A case of drug pushing dragged on and then was finally adjourned to the following day.
By the time she got back to the office, it was buzzing with the news of Perry’s sacking. Scottish Television had played the tape on the lunchtime news.
A troubleshooter had been sent to Lochdubh to pacify the maligned villagers with money.
Perry had tried to blame Elspeth and was told roundly to forget it. He had made enough trouble already. Elspeth heaved a sigh of relief. She still had the stolen radio and CD player in her flat.
The newspaper published a full apology. The villagers were compensated. Hamish found himself the pleased beneficiary of one thousand pounds. As soon as it had arisen, the public demonstration of affection disappeared and Loch-dubh settled into its old ways.
Chapter Twelve
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Lochdubh settled down into its usual placid ways. Hamish hoped the poachers were long gone.
He opened the door one misty morning to find his mother standing on the step. He stooped down and gave her a hug. “What brings you?”
“I’ve a rare treat for you, Hamish,” said Mrs. Macbeth, sitting at the table and opening up a capacious leather handbag. “Have you heard o’ Pedro’s Olive Oil?”
Hamish shook his red head. “And what did you win this time?” he asked. His mother was addicted to entering competitions.
“This!” She pulled out a folder. “It’s a four-day trip to Barcelona, first class on Eurostar to Paris, then Grande Classe on a train called the Joan Miró and a few nights in a hotel. You’d need to leave in two weeks’ time.”
“Can’t you give it to anyone else, Mum? I mean, I’ve been to Spain.”
“It’s a great big country. You’ve got to get out a bit.”
“How did you win?”
“I wrote a slogan, ‘Pedro’s health-giving olive oil can give you long life.’ See! Simple. Better to keep it simple. They’ve got a photo o’ a fellow who looks like a Spanish Father Christmas to put on the bottles.”
“And that’s it? What if someone uses the stuff aged thirty and drops dead?”
“I don’t have to bother about that. Anyway, it’s all in the words. I said ‘can,’ not ‘will.’” A note of steel entered her voice. “What you need is a holiday. I’m leaving this folder here and in a fortnight’s time, I want to hear you’re on your way.”
In vain did Hamish protest. His mother slapped the folder down on the table and left.
Two days later, feeling he had done his duty by driving the many miles over his beat, he decided to take himself up into the hills. A little part of him was still worried that the poachers were out to get him.
It was a grand day as he headed up into the mountains. The peaks of the Two Sisters were still covered in snow. The days were getting longer already, which was cheering. There was so very little daylight in the north in winter.
A curlew piped its mournful note and up above, a golden eagle flashed its wings in the sun. He turned and looked back at the village. He could see a figure that looked like Archie Maclean painting something on a board outside his cottage. He took out a small pair of powerful binoculars and focussed on the notice. It said, TRIPS ROUND THE BAY IN A GENUINE SCOTTISH FISHING BOAT.
Hamish remembered that Archie had decided to try his hand in a bit of tourism when the summer came along. The fish stocks were dwindling, and he had been searching around for a way to make some extra money.
Right down the hill something glinted in the heather.
Hamish took to his heels and ran. He looked briefly back over his shoulder. Two men with guns had risen out of the heather where they had been hiding.
Hamish was a champion hill runner. He ran like the wind heading up and up to a particular plateau he knew. The round tarns, those ponds like miniature Scottish lochs left behind by the Ice Age, shone like so many giants’ blue eyes in the sun.
On and on ran Hamish until he gained the plateau, which was covered by a peat bog.
Experienced in the treacheries of the bog, he leapt from tussock to tussock, gained the far side, and crouched down behind a large boulder.
He was unarmed. He took out his mobile phone and found that the battery was dead.
His wits against two rifles! He could only hope it would work.
What were their names again? Ah, he had it. The older one was Walter Wills and the younger, Granger Home.
He cautiously looked round the rock in ti
me to see the two men on the far side of the bog.
“There’s the bastard!” shouted Wally. He raised his rifle. Hamish withdrew his head as a bullet pinged off the rock.
Sound carried in the clear air. He heard Wally saying, “He cannae be armed or he’d ha’ shot back. Come on. Let’s get him.”
Down below at his cottage window, Angus the seer put down his powerful telescope and hurtled out of his cottage and down the brae to the village, crying for help.
“Come on, come on,” muttered Hamish.
Suddenly there was a cry. “Get me out o’ here!”
Hamish peered round the rock. Granger had fallen into a peat bog. Wally put his gun down on the heather and tried to pull him out. “I’m sinking,” moaned Granger. “You’ve got to hold me.”
“Here!” said Wally. “Hold on tae the butt o’ my rifle and I’ll pull you out.”
There was a loud shot and Wally fell to the ground.
He forgot to put the safety catch on, thought Hamish. The man’s shot himself.
Hamish hurried towards them. Someone had left a long branch, which they had been using as a walking stick. He seized it and then crouched down by Granger. “I’m going to wedge this under your arms. Don’t move or struggle. I’ll get help.”
He then went to Wally. The man’s blank eyes looked up to the indifferent sky.
“I shot him.” Tears ran down Granger’s cheeks. “When I grabbed his rifle, I must ha’ pulled the trigger.”
“It won’t be long,” said Hamish.
He ran off. Further down the slopes he met a posse of ghillies and gamekeepers and told them what had happened.
“Air-sea rescue’ll be along in a minute. They can pull him out of the bog,” said one ghillie.
By the time they returned, a helicopter had come over the mountains and was hovering over the bog. Two men came down. “The best thing you can do,” said Hamish, “is get a rope round him and pull him out.”
