by M C Beaton
When she returned to the hotel, after scrubbing out the inside of the car and then taking it through a car wash, she checked out.
As she drove steadily north out of Santiago, she suddenly remembered her husband saying, “What I like about you, Sandra, is that you’re as bad as me.” She hadn’t known what he had meant. Now she did.
A week later, Tam received a phone call from Ailsa. “Milly’s back,” she said.
“I’ll be right there,” he cried.
“Don’t! There’s something you don’t know,” cried Ailsa, but Tam had already slammed down the phone.
He bought a large bouquet of roses and headed out to Drim. Smoke was rising from the chimney. He knocked at the door.
Milly answered it. Her eyes widened when she saw him. “Why, Tam…”
“Who is it?” called a male voice.
“Go away,” hissed Milly. A man appeared behind her. He was tall and middle-aged with thick grey hair and a pugnacious face. “Who is this?” he demanded.
“An old friend of mine, Tam Tamworthy,” said Milly. She raised a hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face, and the sun sparkled on a large diamond ring on her engagement finger.
“Come in, Tam,” said Milly. He gave her the roses.
He followed her into the kitchen. “This is my fiancé, Giles Brandon,” said Milly in a low voice. “We got engaged when I was on a cruise.”
Giles put an arm around Milly’s shoulders. “We’re getting married as soon as possible. Milly wants to get married here.”
Tam wanted to shout that Milly was engaged to him but there was something in her pleading, frightened eyes that stopped him.
“Don’t just stand there, Milly,” said Giles. “Make us some coffee.”
“It’s all right,” said Tam. “I’m off.”
He walked down to the village store. “I tried to stop you,” said Ailsa sadly. “They arrived yesterday, and, och, he’s as bad a bully as the captain was. She was only in the shop a few minutes. She tried to pretend it was the great romance but he came shoving in and said, ‘Shouldn’t you be getting my dinner instead of standing here gossiping?’ ”
“I’ve got to talk to her in private,” said Tam.
“I’ve an idea,” said Ailsa. “Get yourself over to Lochdubh and get Hamish to ask that Giles call at the police station. He’ll think of something.”
Hamish listened as Tam poured out his woes.
“So you really do love her?” said Hamish. “It’s not chust for a story?”
“I’d do anything to get her back.”
“I think Prosser’s in the neighbourhood and looking for a chance to get his revenge on me,” said Hamish. “I’ll see if I can get Brandon over here.”
Hamish phoned and spoke to Giles Brandon. He said that a killer was stalking the area, and he feared Milly might be in danger. He suggested that Mr. Brandon should come to the police station immediately so that they could discuss security measures.
“Can’t you come over here?” demanded Giles.
“There are some papers you need to see.”
“Oh, very well.” He hung up.
“I’ve got to go to the police station in Lochdubh, Milly,” Giles told her. “Some bollocks about security. That man Prosser who’s on the run wouldn’t dare show his face in Scotland. These local yokels do panic. In my regiment, we didn’t run from anyone. And when I get back, we’ll go to an estate agent and put this place on the market.”
“Couldn’t we stay?” asked Milly timidly. “I like it here.”
“You don’t know what’s good for you. Stuck up here at the back of beyond! Just leave everything to me. Got it?”
He loomed over her, and she cringed back in her chair. “Yes, dear.”
“That’s the ticket. Won’t be long.”
When he had gone, Milly thought miserably of how tender and caring he had been on the cruise. But when they had become engaged and got back to Britain, he had revealed himself to be a bully. She hadn’t told him about the money she had found. She had been frightened he would tell her to hand it over to the police and so she put it back in her late husband’s attache case and reburied it in the flower bed.
Tam waited on the waterfront until he saw Brandon arrive at the police station and then roared off to Drim.
When Milly answered the door, Tam cried, “Oh, Milly, why did you go away without telling me?”
“I overheard that phone call from your editor,” said Milly. “It was plain you were just using me.”
“I wasn’t,” said Tam desperately. “I do love you, Milly, but I’ve got to keep up a front with the editor that I’m a hard-nosed reporter. If I told him the truth, he’d have stopped me spending so much time with you.”
“It’s too late now,” said Milly. “Go away. Don’t make trouble for me.” And then she shut the door.
Prosser lay up on the moors. With a pair of powerful binoculars, he picked out the press card on the windscreen of Tam’s car. Bloody reporters. But whoever that man was who was staying with Milly had to be got rid of. Then he would deal with Hamish Macbeth. After that, he would sweat Milly to find out where the missing money was. Davenport had been paid in cash. He would tie her up and take the house apart from top to bottom if she really didn’t know where the money was.
He had seen the man drive off from the house. He swallowed a couple of painkillers. His head ached abominably these days.
Prosser picked up his rifle and made his way down to the one-track Drim road.
Giles Brandon was feeling mellow. He considered Hamish Macbeth an overanxious fool, but a hospitable one at that. Seemingly not caring about the laws of drinking and driving, Hamish had plied him with a very fine old malt and deferred to his army experience. Brandon had told him that he had recently retired. He had been a colonel and had done time in Iraq.
He was halfway to Drim when he was stopped by a flock of sheep across the road. He peered around angrily looking for a shepherd but could see no one. The fine day had gone, and a damp drizzle was whipping across the heather. His pleasant mood gone, he slammed his hand impatiently on the horn. A few sheep scattered, but the rest looked at him with mild eyes.
Brandon got down from the car and waved his arms. “Shoo!” he yelled. “Bugger off!”
A bullet took him in the back of the head and he fell facedown amongst the sheep. Prosser stepped forward and fired another two bullets into the back of his head.
Unaware that he was, in a way, imitating his wife, he dragged the body and dumped it into the back of Brandon’s Land Rover. He got into the driver’s seat and drove off across the heather, bumping along until he came to a heathery track. The sun had come out again, and everything glittered in the light. He went on up to the lip of a tarn, one of those little round lochs of Sutherland. Leaving the handbrake off, he got down, went round the back of the vehicle, and began to push with all his might. At last, the Land Rover began to move. Over the edge it went, straight down into the water. There was an almighty splash and then silence. He leaned over the edge. Nothing now to be seen but a few ripples.
He was tired of sleeping rough. He was determined to find some shelter and wait until dark.
Milly waited and waited for Brandon to come back and, as the light began to fade, she phoned Hamish.
“I’m sure he’ll be all right,” said Hamish. “Give it a bittie longer.” But when he rang off, he thought guiltily of all the whisky he had given Brandon. He drove off towards Drim very slowly searching to right and left in case the man had driven off the road. Halfway along the road, a shepherd, Terry McGowan, called on him to stop.
“What’s up?” asked Hamish.
“Some bastard’s cut my fences and I found my sheep all ower the road.”
Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover. It was not unknown for a rival crofter to cut another’s fences, although it hadn’t happened for a long time. Could it have been done to make Brandon stop? And if so, why? Was he connected in any way to Prosser?
“I’ll look into it,” he said. He walked along the road for a bit, scanning the ground for any signs of an attack. But it was getting dark and although he shone a powerful torch this way and that, he could not see any signs of anything sinister.
He got back into his vehicle and went on to Drim. Milly had seen him coming and came out to meet him.
“Can’t see him anywhere,” said Hamish. “You go back in the house. I’m just going to put a call through to headquarters.”
He reported the missing Brandon and said he would need some men to help him search. He waited hopefully, but it was Jimmy Anderson who finally got back to him. “No go,” he said. “Blair says the man’s probably off shopping in Inverness or somewhere.”
“Are that lot back from Brazil yet?”
“Yes, they’re in Wormwood Scrubs on remand.”
“Get Scotland Yard to ask them if a Giles Brandon was involved in any of their crooked deals.”
“Hamish, I don’t usually agree with Blair, but you know you should wait a bit or you’ll look a right fool when he walks back in the door of Milly’s house.”
Angus Macdonald, the seer, awoke suddenly that night. He sensed someone outside. He got slowly out of bed without putting on the light, unlocked the gun cabinet, and took out his shotgun. He deftly loaded it and went into his kitchen at the back of his cottage. He cautiously opened the back door, raised his shotgun, and fired it out into the blackness.
Prosser cursed and ran for cover. He had picked out the seer’s cottage, hoping to break in and terrify some householder into giving him shelter until the small hours of the morning.
Angus phoned Hamish Macbeth. Hamish had been asleep, but he jumped out of bed as soon as Angus told him about the prowler.
Prosser, thought Hamish. He knew if he tried to get some manpower over, Blair would block it. He quickly dressed, ran to the church, and began to ring the bell.
The villagers began to gather in the church. Some of the old people remembered when the bell had been rung during the Second World War to alert them that a German warship had been spotted by one of the fishing boats.
Hamish decided to say he thought the prowler was Prosser. When they had all gathered, he said, “Thon murderer, Prosser, is on the loose around the village. I want you men to get your guns and spread out and hunt him down!”
High up above the village, Prosser stared down through his night-vision binoculars. He saw people streaming out of the church hall. Then he began to see men with guns beginning to leave the village and head up on the moors.
He thought quickly. The safest place for him that night would be in the village itself. He would break into one of the cottages while the men were searching the moors and mountains for him, hold up some householder, and wait until the hunt had died down. Then he would take care of Hamish Macbeth.
The Currie sisters returned to their cottage on the waterfront. “I’ll make us a nice cup of cocoa,” said Nessie, “after we’ve got into something comfortable.”
“Comfortable,” repeated her sister, the echo.
Nessie went into the kitchen and turned on the radio. She was getting rather deaf, and whistles and static sounded round the kitchen as she tried to find a programme with some music. At last, the music of the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin blasted round the kitchen.
The kettle had just boiled when Nessie felt something pressed against the side of her neck and a man’s voice said, “This is a gun. I have tied the other old bird up. One squeak out of you and I’ll kill you both. Make me something to eat.”
Nessie, a small figure wrapped in a fluffy pink dressing gown, with old-fashioned steel rollers in her white hair, said, “Bacon and eggs?”
“That’ll do. I’ve cut the phone line so don’t be getting any ideas. I’m going back into your living room and if you make a wrong move, I will shoot your friend.”
Nessie felt a dead calm. She took down a frying pan, opened the fridge, took out eggs and bacon, and then began to cook them. As if moving in a dream, she took down another pan and filled it up with bleach. She put two teabags into a teapot and then poured the boiling bleach in on top of them.
She slipped a sharp knife into her dressing gown pocket. When everything was ready, she loaded up a large tray and carried it into the living room. Jessie stared at her, her eyes wide and blank with shock. She had tape over her mouth. Her ankles were bound with her dressing gown cord.
Nessie put the tray down on the table by the window. Prosser looked a sinister figure. His face was blacked, and his clothes were filthy from sleeping rough.
He waved the pistol. “You sit down while I eat,” he snarled. “Pour the tea.”
Nessie poured him a large mug of tea. She sat down, back erect, and watched him in silence.
“Cut the bacon,” he snarled. He planned to eat with one hand while keeping the revolver levelled on her. Nessie cut the bacon into small pieces. She had covered the already salty bacon in salt.
He took a large gulp of tea, and his eyes bulged. He gasped and wretched, clutching his throat. Jessie seized the pistol. But she knew nothing about guns and did not know how to release the safety catch. Prosser staggered to the door. All he wanted to do was get away. He crashed out into the night.
Nessie took out her knife and freed her sister. “We’ve got to ring the bell,” she said. “We’ve got to get the men back.”
“Mmm,” said Jessie, her mouth still covered by duct tape.
Up on the moors, Hamish and the searching men heard the bell. Cursing, Hamish sprinted down towards the village, his dog and cat at his heels.
In the church, in the corner where the bell rope of the single bell hung down, stood Nessie Currie, pulling on the rope for all she was worth.
When he tapped her on the shoulder, she screamed until she saw who it was.
The villagers were all crowding back into the church. Matthew Campbell, editor of the Highland Times, listened as Nessie told her story. Then, led by Hamish, they all ran out again to look for Prosser. Hamish stopped on the way and roused Jimmy. From Nessie’s description, he said, it looked as if Prosser had come back to exact revenge.
All that night, the villagers, reinforced by police, searched all around while a police helicopter buzzed overhead.
The rain had cleared and the first Sutherland frost glittered on the heather. Lying buried in the heather, Prosser felt deadly ill. He would need to get back to Edinburgh, where he knew a doctor who owed him a favour. They would have roadblocks up all over the place. But he had to move or he would freeze to death. He daren’t even go back to the bothie where he had hidden his rifle and other equipment.
He rose stiffly. His mouth was burning. A sheer desire to stay alive drove him up to his feet.
By a long circuitous route he arrived at the back of the Tommel Castle Hotel. The kitchen door was only a simple Yale lock, and he sprang it easily. He took a pencil torch out of his pocket and flashed it around the kitchen. He opened the fridge, took out a bottle of milk, and gulped as much down as he could. He ate dry bread and then drank more milk. Then he made his way quietly up the back stairs. He found an empty hotel room, the door standing open. He went in and shut and locked the door, first hanging a DO NOT DISTURB sign outside. Prosser stripped off and showered, tumbled into bed, and fell fast asleep.
When he awoke next morning, he decided he needed a change of clothes. He heard voices in the corridor outside as the guests went down for breakfast. He heard the people in the room next door, talking loudly as they walked away. Wrapped in a towelling robe he had found in the bathroom, he waited until the corridor was silent. He saw a maid coming along with clean sheets and positioned himself outside the door next to his.
“I’m afraid I’ve lost my key,” he said. He winked at her. “I was just… er… visiting a friend.” The Polish maid giggled. She was new and had just come on duty. She smiled and opened the door with her passkey. She went to the door of the room he had spent the night in.
“Just leave her,” sa
id Prosser. “She wants to sleep until late.”
He went quickly into the room she had opened for him. He opened drawers and took out clean underwear and put it on. It was a little bit large for him. He then opened the wardrobe and selected moleskin trousers, a hunting jacket, and a plaid shirt. He grinned. There was even a deerstalker. He crammed it down on his head.
Then he saw that the man had left his wallet on the bedside table. He snatched it up. He coolly walked out and down into reception and out into the car park. He got into the nearest car, one the hotel kept for guests, planning to hotwire it, but grinned when he saw the keys in the ignition.
By producing the driving licence he had found in the stolen wallet, he sailed through the roadblock. It was an old license, the kind that did not have a photograph. Once the euphoria of escape left him, he realised he was running a temperature and felt very sick indeed. And yet he knew he would have to ditch the car and steal another. Any minute now, the hunt would be on for whoever had stolen the hotel guest’s wallet and clothes along with one of the hotel cars.
He took the cash out of the wallet and then threw the wallet out of the window. He still had plenty of cash of his own but, he reflected, it was as well to have as much as he could get. He stopped in Dingwall. He felt dizzy and faint. He bought a change of clothes and changed in a public toilet. Leaving the clothes he had stolen in the car, he hotwired a different vehicle he found parked in a far corner where he hoped it would be out of sight of any CCTV cameras.
He then drove to Inverness airport, where he left the car. He had one fake credit card left. He did not want to use it but knew he would have to risk it. Paying an air ticket with cash might start alarm bells ringing.
When he arrived at Edinburgh airport, he felt dizzy with fever. Summoning all his energies, he took a cab to the doctor’s, burning with fever and thoughts of revenge.
Chapter Twelve
And come he slow, or come he fast,
It is but Death who comes at last.
—Sir Walter Scott
