by M C Beaton
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To my good neighbours, Louise Bowles and
Samantha Burke, with affection
Chapter One
Send home my long stray’d eyes to me,
Which O! too long have dwelt on thee
—William Blake
Morag Merrilea was an art student, earning money in her summer holidays by working as a secretary for Shopmark Fashions in Cnothan in the Scottish county of Sutherland. She was English and considered herself a cut above her fellow workers. She was highly unpopular. Her appearance was unprepossessing. She had lank brown hair and rather prominent green eyes. But she had a passion for art and for studying faces.
Shopmark Fashions was a new factory on the outskirts of the village, risen out of an old derelict Victorian furniture store. Cnothan was a grim place with one main street running down to a man-made loch over which towered the grey walls of a hydroelectric dam.
Morag had taken the job because she had dreamt of a romantic highland village, and had never quite got over the culture shock of being in Cnothan where the sour locals took pride in “keeping themselves to themselves.”
She sat in her usual corner of the Highlander pub one Saturday evening with her sketchbook, busily drawing the faces of people in the pub, and also the face of someone looking in at the window. Morag always drank alone. The other employees of the factory drank at a pub down on the lochside and, strangely enough, Morag’s solitary drinking was not remarked on because of her unpopularity and the locals shying away from any mention of her.
Although not particularly imaginative, that particular evening she seemed to feel the remoteness, the very foreignness of Sutherland pressing in on her, a claustrophobic sense that the great towering mountains were creeping closer across the heathery moors. The result was, she drank more than usual. The pub was quite full with forestry workers, crofters, and the unemployed. Morag was brilliant at drawing faces and felt the very act of drawing people, of getting them on paper, put them in her power.
At one point, she went to the lavatory. When she returned, she found her sketchbook was missing. She complained to the barman and to everyone around. Getting nothing in reply but blank stares, she downed her drink and made for the door. Morag collapsed outside and was taken to hospital.
After she came awake the following morning and received a lecture from a young doctor on the evils of drink, Morag was gripped with a sudden fear that she might be an alcoholic. She had drunk four pints of beer and assumed she had experienced a blackout. She could not remember the previous evening at all.
She did have one friend at Hornsey Art College where she had studied. She phoned her friend, Celia Hedron, and told her about losing her memory.
Celia said sharply, “Have you considered that someone might have slipped you a date rape drug? That blacks you out so you can’t remember things.”
This dramatic solution appealed to Morag, who did not like to think she was a common alcoholic. She dithered for a week before catching a bus from Cnothan and presenting herself at the police station in Lochdubh. She had been told the police sergeant, Hamish Macbeth, was also responsible for policing Cnothan—along with vast tracts of Sutherland.
Her first impression of Hamish Macbeth was a bad one. When she arrived, he was up on a ladder clearing out the guttering. His lazy constable, Dick Fraser, a plump man with a grey moustache, was sleeping peacefully in the front garden on a deck chair.
“You!” shouted Morag. “Get down here immediately. I have a crime to report.”
Hamish came slowly down the ladder. She saw a tall man with flaming red hair and hazel eyes.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.
Morag threw back her head and declared, “I have been drugged, raped, and my sketchbook has been stolen.”
“Then you’d better come ben to the office,” said Hamish mildly.
“Whassat?” mumbled Dick and went back to sleep.
Hamish led the way in at the side door, through the kitchen, and into his small office, where he pulled out a chair for her. He wrote down the details of her addresses in Cnothan and London along with her phone numbers at home and work.
“It’s like this,” said Morag. She gave him her view of what had happened, along with details of her age, twenty-three, and her work as a secretary at the clothes factory.
“And when exactly did this take place?” asked Hamish.
“Last Saturday week.”
Hamish had been taking notes. He put down his pen. “If you were drugged with some date rape drug, it would no longer be in your system. Were you checked for signs of rape?”
“Well, no.”
“I think we should go to the hospital right away and have you checked.”
Morag bit her lip. She had examined herself and knew there were no signs of bruising or forced entry. “I can’t be bothered,” she said.
“Then I don’t see what you expect me to do,” said Hamish patiently.
“You are a moron,” said Morag. “You could at least make some push to get my sketchbook back—that is if you ever get off your arse and do anything.”
“What were you sketching?”
“Faces of people in the pub. Oh, and someone who looked in at the window.”
“Are you any good?” asked Hamish bluntly.
She opened her large handbag, pulled out a small sketchpad, and handed it to him.
His interest quickened. She was very good indeed.
“I’ll need to take a note of who was in the pub. Can you remember any names?”
“They’re all just faces to me—Angus this and Jimmy that. I do not consort with the local peasantry. The factory staff drink at the Loaming down on the loch.”
“With an attitude like that,” said Hamish, the sudden sibilance of his accent showing he was annoyed, “I’m fair astounded that someone didnae try to bump you off instead of chust slipping something in your drink.”
“You’re as useless as the rest of…”
“Calm down, lassie. I hae this idea…”
“Wonders will never cease.”
“Oh, shut up and listen for once in your life. I know a hypnotist down in Strathbane. He might be able to put you under and restore some o’ your memory.”
Morag’s protruding eyes gleamed. The drama of such a suggestion appealed to her along with the idea of rattling the cage of whoever had drugged her drink.
“I’ll make an appointment and let you know,” said Hamish.
Hamish wondered as he set off for Strathbane later that day with Dick why he was even bothering to help such an unlovely character as Morag Merrilea. He cursed himself for not having asked exactly how much she had to drink. She could simply have had an alcoholic blackout.
Still, he reminded himself, he wasn’t doing anything else at the moment. The summer was unusually warm, with those nasty biting midges of the Highlands out in force. Patel’s, the local shop in Lochdubh, had sold out of insect repellant.
As they mounted a crest of the road, Dick said, “Every time I see Strathbane, I’m right glad I’m out of it.”
Strathbane was a blot on the beauty of Sutherland. Once a busy fishing port, it had died when the fishing stocks ran out. Drugs ar
rived and it became a town with an air of dirt and desolation.
“I don’t like this idea of a hypnotist,” said Dick. “Sounds awfy like black magic.”
“Och, even Strathbane police use Mr. Jeffreys from time to time.”
“Did they say they would pay his bill?”
Hamish shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. He knew that Detective Chief Inspector Blair, the bane of his life, would have put a stop to it.
“It’s fine,” he said airily. “He’ll just send in his bill as usual.”
Dick was disappointed in Mr. Jeffreys. He had expected to meet an elderly guru.
But Jeffreys was only in his thirties, a thin man with brown hair in a ponytail, dressed in torn jeans and a T-shirt.
“Let me see,” said Jeffreys. “I can fit her in at three o’clock next Saturday.”
Hamish phoned Morag on her mobile. She was delighted. “Wait till those bastards in the pub hear about this!”
“I wouldnae go around shooting your mouth off,” cautioned Hamish. “I’ll collect you on Saturday and take you to Strathbane.”
In the three days leading up to Saturday, Hamish and Dick pottered around the police station. To Dick Fraser, it was paradise. Viewed as useless by headquarters in Strathbane, he had been relocated to Lochdubh. He was a quiz addict, appearing on television quiz shows, and the kitchen in the police station gleamed with his winnings—an espresso coffee making machine, a dishwasher, a new washing machine, and a new microwave.
The single and widowed ladies of the village began to regard him as prime husband material, but Dick showed no interest, preferring to dream in a deck chair in the front garden by day and watch television in the evenings.
He was roused from his lethargy on Saturday by Hamish. “We’d better go and pick up yon Morag female,” said Hamish. “Get your uniform on.”
Morag rented a flat in a Victorian villa on the edge of Cnothan. When Hamish rang her doorbell, there was no reply. Morag’s flat was on the top floor. He stood back and looked up. The curtains were open, but there was no sign of anyone moving about.
“Silly cow,” he muttered. “I’m sure she wouldnae have forgotten.” He rang the landlady’s bell.
Mrs. Douglas, the landlady, opened the door. She was a small round woman with thick glasses and an untidy thatch of grey hair.
“Whit now?” she demanded.
“We’ve come to collect Miss Merrilea,” said Hamish patiently. “Is herself at home?”
“Dinnae ken.”
“Would you please go and look?”
Grumbling, she shuffled off up the stairs. They waited in the warm sunlight.
At last she reappeared and handed Hamish a postcard. “This was stuck on her door,” she said.
Typed neatly on a postcard was: “Gone to London. Will be in touch.” It was not signed.
“I don’t like this,” said Hamish. “Would you mind showing us her flat?”
“Have ye a warrant?”
“No, I haff not!” said Hamish. “But if you don’t let me in and show me her flat, I’ll come back here with a warrant and I will turn this whole damn place upside down, including your premises.”
“Here, now, no need for that,” she said, thinking of the cash undeclared to the taxman hidden under her mattress. “I’ll get the key.”
They followed her into a shadowy hall lit with coloured harlequin diamonds of light from the sun shining through the stained-glass panel on the front door.
Dick eyed the steep stairs. “I’ll be waiting for ye outside, sir,” he said to Hamish.
“Oh, all right,” said Hamish crossly.
He followed Mrs. Douglas as she panted up the stairs. She inserted a key into a door on the top landing. “There’s no need for you to wait,” said Hamish. “I’ll bring you down the key when I’ve finished.”
The flat consisted of a small living room, a cell of a bedroom, a kitchen unit behind a curtain, and a shower. The living room contained a small card table laden with artist’s materials and two hard-backed chairs by the window. There was a dingy print of The Stag at Bay over the empty fireplace. One battered armchair was beside the fireplace facing a small television set. Planks on bricks along one wall supplied bookshelves.
Hamish went into the bedroom. He opened the wardrobe. A few skirts and blouses hung there and a winter coat. On top of the wardrobe was a large suitcase. He hauled it down and opened it up. It was empty. He put it back and then opened a chest of drawers. There were various surprisingly saucy items of lingerie: thongs and stockings with lace tops.
He sat down on the bed and looked round. She might have had a backpack of some kind to take a few clothes with her. There was no sign of a handbag, passport, or wallet.
He locked up and went downstairs to where Mrs. Douglas was waiting in the hall. “Did she have a car?” he asked, handing over the keys.
“No, she had a bike.”
“And where does she keep it?”
“Just outside. But it’s no’ there.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Cannae bring tae mind.”
“Think!”
“Oh, I mind now. It was yesterday morning. Herself was just off tae work.”
“Was she carrying a suitcase or any sort of luggage?”
“No. She just got on her bike and went off, same as ever.”
Hamish felt uneasy. He put the postcard in a forensic bag and went out to join Dick.
“We’d better check where she works,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
At Shopmark Fashions, they found that Morag worked as secretary to the boss, Harry Gilchrist. Mr. Gilchrist kept them waiting ten minutes, which Hamish put down to the usual pompous Scottish boss’s way of trying to seem important.
Mr. Gilchrist was a tall, thin man in his forties. He had thick black hair in a widow’s peak above a sallow face and wet brown eyes.
“Working on Saturday?” asked Hamish.
“Work never stops,” said Gilchrist. “What do the police want with me?”
“Did Morag Merrilea turn up for work yesterday?”
“As a matter of fact, she didn’t. I meant to send someone to check on her on Monday if she was still absent.”
“She left a postcard on the door of her flat saying she had gone to London.”
“Isn’t that just typical of staff these days!” raged Gilchrist. “Well, if you come across her, tell her she’s fired.”
“Did she say anything about going to see a hypnotist?”
“No. A hypnotist? Why?”
Hamish explained about the suspected drugged drink and the missing sketchbook.
“Oh, that? She was complaining about that all over the place. She did drink a fair bit. She was in the habit of making things up.”
“Is there anyone she was close to?”
“She kept herself to herself.”
Like the whole of bloody Cnothan, thought Hamish.
Dick and Hamish next went to the Highlander pub. Pubs all over Britain had been smartened up with restaurants and pleasant decor, but the Highlander had been unmoved by time. There was one dim room with scarred tables and rickety chairs. The walls were still brown with nicotine from the days before the smoking ban. The only food on offer was in a glass case on the counter: tired-looking sandwiches and a solitary mutton pie.
Hamish recognised the barman and owner, Stolly Maguire. Stolly was polishing a glass with a dirty rag when they approached him. He was a thickset man with a bald head wearing a tank top strained over a beer belly.
Hamish explained they were trying to find out the whereabouts of Morag Merrilea.
“Thon artist?” said Stolly. “Havenae seen her. Usually comes in Saturday evening.”
“Two Saturdays ago,” said Hamish patiently, “did you notice anyone approaching her table when she went to the toilet?”
“Naw. It was fair busy.”
Hamish turned round and surveyed the customers, a mixture of crofters
, shepherds, builders, and the unemployed.
“Which one of them was here two Saturdays ago?”
“I cannae mind,” said Stolly. “Ask them? I saw her collapsing outside the door and phoned for an ambulance.”
So Hamish and Dick went from table to table to receive surly answers to the effect that they had seen her on that Saturday but hadn’t noticed anyone taking her sketchbook or putting something in her drink.
But a youth with greasy hair said he had noticed a stranger. “Can you describe him?” asked Hamish. “What is your name?”
“Fergus McQueen.”
“Well, Fergus, what did he look like?”
“Hard tae tell. He had wan o’ thae baseball caps pulled right down. Small and skinny.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Black T-shirt, black jeans.”
“The cap. Did it have a logo on it?”
“Naw. It was dark green with an orange stripe.”
“Give me your address. We may want you to come to Strathbane and help a police artist make a sketch.”
Back at Lochdubh, Hamish sat down at the computer in the police station office and sent over a report. He felt uneasy. It was too much of a coincidence that she should disappear when she had an appointment with the hypnotist.
To his amazement, he got a call from Detective Sergeant Jimmy Anderson later that day. “Blair’s decided to look into it,” he said.
“Why? I thought he’d delight in shooting the whole thing down,” said Hamish.
“I think he feels if there is a crime, then he wants to be the one to solve it. You’ve stolen his glory too many times.”
“I’d better get back to Cnothan and join him.”
“He says you’re to sit tight and look after your sheep and leave it to the experts.”
Hamish groaned. He knew that Blair’s blustering, bullying tactics would make the locals clam up even more.
Hamish waited gloomily for the inevitable. Sure enough it came later with an e-mail from Blair telling him it was a wild goose chase and to stop wasting police time and, furthermore, never again try to employ the hypnotist without first getting clearance.
