by M C Beaton
That will do nicely, she thought. The pain of her burns was creeping back but she didn’t want to take any morphine until she had dealt with the old fool.
Pulling the scarf up round her face again, she made her way up to Angus Macdonald’s cottage, staggering from side to side because her legs felt weak, and knocked at the door. The seer answered her knock and stood looking thoughtfully at her.
“Could you give me a drink of water? I don’t feel very well,” said Heather.
“Come ben,” said the seer.
He went into the kitchen. Heather saw a pair of scissors lying on a table. She quickly cut the telephone wire. She would put this old boy at his ease and then stab him. What did one more death matter?
Angus came back and handed her a glass of water. He knew exactly who she was. A quick glance told him his phone had been cut, and his mobile was on the kitchen counter. But he wanted to capture her himself. Hamish Macbeth had jeered at him for too long about being a fake. If he could outwit her and overpower her, he would phone the press before he even phoned the police.
Heather took some morphine pills and quickly swallowed them. The pain was making her feel faint, but she kept firm hold of the scissors.
Angus banked up the fire and then threw on a pile of fir cones from a basket on the hearth. Heather dragged her chair away from the fire as the heat from it made her burns sing with pain.
Angus settled comfortably back in his battered armchair facing her. “Tell me about yourself,” he said.
“I’m just a tourist,” said Heather. Night had fallen outside.
“You don’t look at all well,” said Angus.
Hamish was wearily driving along the waterfront to his police station. He cursed and braked suddenly as the small figures of the Currie sisters appeared in his headlights.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he demanded, jumping down from the Land Rover.
“There’s a drunk woman gone up to Angus’s place,” said Nessie.
“Place,” echoed her infuriating sister.
“It’s your duty to go and see the old man is all right.”
Hamish was about to tell them to forget it, but he suddenly asked, “What was she wearing?”
“A blue tweed coat and a woolly hat. Staggering all over the place.”
“Out of my way,” shouted Hamish, jumping in the Land Rover.
He went on to the police station and called to Dick. “Get ready. We’re paying a call on Angus.”
“You’re not a tourist,” Angus was saying. “You’re Heather Camford. Are you going to kill me?”
“I just need a place to rest up,” said Heather. “Do what you’re told and you won’t get hurt.”
What she really planned to do was wait until the pain abated and stab him in the neck with the scissors.
Angus cursed his own vanity. He should have phoned Hamish from his mobile when he was getting that glass of water for her in the kitchen.
“Why did you kill your own sister?” he asked.
“Because she always had it all. I was engaged to Harry Gilchrist. Then our parents died and precious Brenda got most of the money and Harry dumped me.”
“So why on earth did you get into this mess for a man who dumped you?”
“Because he showed me a way to get money and travel. Brenda would never even leave Scotland. Although she was a year older, we looked pretty much alike, except she was a bore. The crunch came when Harry saw her will. She was going to leave everything to our brother, Luke.”
Angus could sense her getting ready to spring.
“What’s that?” she cried.
“The wind’s getting up,” said Angus.
“I swear I heard something.”
She rose to her feet and went to the window. Angus jumped up from his chair and grabbed her by her bad arm. She screamed in pain and stabbed him viciously with the scissors just as the door crashed open and Hamish Macbeth hurtled into the room. Dick came hurrying in from the back door, and together they wrestled the screaming woman to the ground.
Hamish clipped on the handcuffs while Dick phoned for help. “Get an ambulance as well,” ordered Hamish. “Are you badly hurt, Angus?”
“She got me in the shoulder,” said Angus. “I turned a bit away in time or she’d have got me in the heart.” Heather had lost consciousness, overcome by the pain in her bad arm.
“Have you got a first-aid kit?” Hamish asked.
“In the top kitchen cupboard on the left.”
Hamish went into the kitchen and came back with a box of medical supplies. He swabbed the cut with iodine, put a patch of lint over it, and taped it. “You’ll need stitches,” he said. “Did she confess to anything?”
“Yes, pretty much. She really hated her sister. Did you know that Gilchrist was going to marry Heather until Brenda inherited the money?”
“No, we didn’t know that,” said Hamish, silently cursing Daviot from preventing his investigations into Gilchrist.
Police, who had been searching the area, were quickly on the scene. But they had to wait for an ambulance.
When it finally arrived and Heather was being loaded onto a stretcher, that was when they found she had been faking unconsciousness. As the paramedics were carrying her out, she rolled off the stretcher and began to run off down the brae.
Cursing, Hamish ran after her, caught up with her, dived, and brought her down.
He cautioned her and dragged her to her feet while she cursed and spat at him.
When Heather was finally taken away, Hamish turned to Dick. “I would never at any time have supported the idea of the death penalty. But when I look at a creature like that who’ll probably end up in some cosy psychiatric unit, I could almost wish we still had it.”
Another ambulance, to take Angus to hospital, drove up to the cottage. “I’m going with him,” said Hamish.
“I’d better get back to the station,” said Dick.
“Hadn’t you better come with me?”
“Well,” said Dick, “someone’s got to look after Sonsie and Lugs.”
Hamish hesitated. He should be treating Dick like a policeman and not like an animal keeper.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “Just write up a report. I’ll do mine later.”
Hamish drove to the hospital in Strathbane. He wanted a further talk with Angus and to make sure there was no chance of Heather escaping again. But Blair, Daviot, and Jimmy were waiting for him to get a report. Daviot and Jimmy were pleased but Blair was furious.
When they finally left him to check on Heather, Hamish made his way down to the emergency department where Angus’s wound was being stitched.
“Will he be staying in?” Hamish asked the doctor.
“He wants to go home. He seems well enough. He’s lost some blood. I think he should rest for an hour or so.”
Hamish pulled a chair up to the bed. When the doctor had left, he asked Angus, “What is puzzling me is the time factor. Didn’t you recognise her? Her description was on radio and television.”
“Aye, I recognised her right away.”
“Let me get this straight. I was stopped by the Currie sisters who saw her going up to your cottage. Why didn’t you phone?”
“She cut the wires.”
“But you’ve got a mobile, haven’t you?”
Angus looked shifty. “I tried,” he lied. “But you know how it is. Often it’s hard to get a signal.”
“Havers.” Hamish’s hazel eyes sharpened. “You wanted to arrest her yourself and get all the glory.”
“I’m a poor auld man,” wailed Angus. “I need to rest.” He closed his eyes.
“I hope it hurts,” said Hamish. He went off to find out how they were getting on with Heather and get his hands treated and rebandaged because the bandages had come loose when he had brought Heather down. Daviot had left but Jimmy and Blair were still there and Blair took great pleasure in ordering Hamish back to his police station.
Outside the hospital, the press h
ad gathered and were being addressed by Daviot. Hamish quietly crept away but then heard Elspeth calling him.
He turned round. “You’ll need to stick to the official statement, Elspeth. But I’ve a wee story for you. Get away from the others and go into emergency. You’ll find the seer, Angus Macdonald, there. He’ll have a grand story for you. It was his cottage she was caught in. He’ll be leaving soon as well, so you’ll get some good film of him inside his home. Scenes of Crimes will have gone over the place by now.”
“Thanks, Hamish. You’re a star.”
Hamish climbed into his Land Rover. He drove to Lochdubh under the beautiful, pitiless stars of Sutherland, shining far above the nasty crimes of humans. There was nothing, thought Hamish, like the old, old county of Sutherland with its vast mountains and acres of woodland for making a man feel he was only renting some temporary space on the planet.
When he got to the police station, Dick fussed over him, serving him a dish of venison stew and pouring him a glass of wine. Although Hamish was grateful, not for the first time did he wish Dick would behave more like a policeman and less like a wife.
After he had eaten, he typed up his report. Heather should be secure enough. A policewoman was sitting guard in her hospital room.
Heather recovered consciousness at four in the morning. Slowly, memory came back and with it all the fear and rage of a trapped animal. She twisted her head. A tall policewoman was asleep on a chair beside the bed. Heather raised her good arm. They had not thought it necessary to padlock her with a guard in the room. She tore out the morphine drip and slowly eased herself out of bed, rage giving her superhuman strength. She picked up a bedpan and brought it down on the policewoman’s head.
Heather worked quickly, getting the policewoman out of her uniform. She knew she would have to be fast before the numbing effect of the drugs wore off. The bandages on her face would have to go. Panting, she took them off. She put on the policewoman’s clothes and crammed the police hat down on her head.
She put the belt round her, detaching the stun gun and holding it ready.
“Where are you going at this time of night?” demanded Mary, long-suffering wife of Detective Chief Inspector Blair.
“I’m going tae the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Shut your face and go back to sleep.”
Blair was furious that once more Hamish Macbeth had snatched glory from him. He had been unable to sleep. Then it had occurred to him that if he visited Heather and she had regained consciousness, he might get some more information out of her.
He drove to the hospital and took the lift up to the private rooms on the top floor.
He was just walking along the corridor when he saw a tall policewoman hurrying towards him. “Why aren’t you on guard?” he shouted.
Heather raised the stun gun, and shot volts of electricity into the detective’s fat chest.
Then she stepped over his body and hurried on her way. A night nurse found Blair ten minutes later. She recognised the detective and assumed he had suffered from a heart attack and summoned help. Blair recovered fifteen minutes later and howled for help.
Hamish was dreaming that he and Priscilla were out in the loch in a small dinghy. There was no wind, and the water was like glass. Priscilla sat beside him at the tiller. “Kiss me, Hamish,” she said.
He bent his head to her but someone was shouting and shouting.
Hamish awoke with a start. “Get up, Hamish,” said Dick. “You’ll never believe this. It’s like The Night of the Living Dead. The damn bitch has got away again.”
Heather hailed a taxi outside the hospital. “Lochdubh,” she ordered.
“Havenae you got your police car?” asked the driver.
“Shut up and drive. This is an emergency.”
Heather stopped the taxi at the foot of the brae leading up to Angus’s cottage. She needed to rest and hide out, and that old fool would be kept in hospital.
She had no money so she curtly told the driver to send the bill to police headquarters.
Clouds were blocking out the starlight. She unhitched a torch from her belt and shone it towards the cottage. Heather drew in a sharp breath of alarm. Police tape fluttered in a rising wind, and a policeman was on guard. Then she remembered she was in uniform.
“Come to relieve me?” said the policeman. “These lazy sods at SOCO won’t be here to go over the place until morning.”
Heather took out her stun gun, and before the police guard realised what was happening she had shot 650 volts into him. What a handy lot of equipment there was on this belt, thought Heather. She snapped open a collapsible truncheon and brought it viciously down on his head. There were some old sacks lying by the door. She covered his body with them and then went inside the cottage, relieved to find the door unlocked.
Angus felt elated as the television crew drove him home. He loved publicity.
As they were approaching the cottage, Angus suddenly cried, “Stop!”
The soundman who was driving threw on the brakes. “What!”
“I sense something bad,” said Angus.
“Very impressive,” said the soundman cynically. “Save it for the camera.”
He drove on and the van lurched up the brae towards the door of the cottage. “Damn,” he said on seeing the police tape. “We’ll need to film outside, Elspeth, and then get him to a hotel.”
They climbed down from the van. “Sit there while we set up the equipment,” said Elspeth.
It just wasn’t fair, thought Angus. An outside shot could not compare with one of him in his armchair by the fire. He had carefully arranged his living room to impress customers, from the blackened kettle on its chain over the peat fire to the bits of old farming implements hanging from the beams.
Heather had settled down in Angus’s armchair. She had built up the fire. She had found the morphine pills where she had left them and had swallowed a handful with a glass of Angus’s precious twelve-year-old malt whisky. Her eyes were just beginning to close when the living room became flooded with a blue-and-white light. She rose and staggered to the window and looked out.
The cameraman, peering through the lens, let out a cry. Heather had removed the police cap and her burned and scarred face looked out like something in a horror film.
Angus got down from the van. “It’s her!” he shouted. “Get her! It’s Heather Camford!”
Hamish was getting ready for bed when he heard the kitchen door burst open and Archie Maclean’s voice cry out, “What’s going on up at the seer’s cottage, Hamish? There’s light and shouts.”
Cursing, Hamish pulled his trousers back on and called to Dick to get ready.
Elspeth tried to pull Angus back as he made for his front door. “I’ll phone the police. She’s dangerous.”
But Angus pulled free. He rushed into his living room. Heather stood in front of the red glow of the peat fire, brandishing a small scythe she had taken down from a hook.
“Back!” she snarled, swiping at him with the scythe. Angus saw the truncheon lying on the table and seized it. Behind him, Elspeth was screaming for help. Angus ducked under the scythe and cracked Heather with a great swinging blow across her legs, hearing the bones crack. She staggered back and fell full length. Her head landed right into the glowing peats.
Angus grabbed her legs and pulled her out. Elspeth rushed to the kitchen and came back with a jug of water which she threw over Heather. Hamish came cannoning in the door and stopped short as, with one last horrible eldritch scream of pain, Heather Camford died.
“I didnae mean…,” babbled Angus. “Not like this. I wass protecting maself. ’Twas an accident.”
“What a shot!” said the white-faced cameraman.
“You filmed it?” exclaimed Hamish.
“Got it all.”
“Hand over that film.”
“Are you kidding? This is the shot of a lifetime.”
“Then I would like to make a statement, Elspeth,” said Hamish. �
��I want to say that while old Angus was being threatened by a murderer, this man, instead of helping, callously filmed the whole thing.”
“Oh, you can have the film,” said the cameraman sulkily.
“Did you call the police?” asked Hamish.
“Yes, I dialled 999.”
“I think I hear sirens,” said Hamish. “Let’s go outside. The smell of roast Heather is sickening.”
Outside, a faint groan alerted them to the policeman under the sacks. While Dick went to help him, police cars and ambulances raced up the brae.
“I wonder how they got here so quickly,” said Hamish. “They must have been scouring the area for her. How on earth did she escape again? That uniform she had on must have been taken from the policewoman on guard.”
Jimmy came panting up. “Where is she?”
“In there. Very dead. She tried to kill Angus. He fought back and she ended up in the fire.”
“Well, that should give her a foretaste of where she’s going,” said Jimmy.
“Take a statement from Angus first and let him get off to the Tommel Castle Hotel. Elspeth, you can do any interview there. I’ll give you a full report of what happened, Jimmy, and then you can get a statement from Angus later.”
“I’ll try, Hamish,” she said weakly. “But I’m feeling very sick.”
Down below, lights were going on in all the cottages and dark figures were beginning to emerge.
Hamish drew Jimmy aside. “Put Angus’s killing of the damn woman in the best light. You know how it is these days. They’re quite capable of charging the auld man wi’ murder.”
“Don’t worry, Hamish. He’ll be shown as a desperate, frail old man fighting for his life against a psychotic serial killer. But if you want some good news on this awful night, Blair went to the hospital hoping to have a word with her before anyone else. She had already got the uniform on, and she downed him with a stun gun.”
“But what a mess it all is,” mourned Hamish. “Elspeth, I’m depending on you to get me that film.”
