by M C Beaton
Hamish took the opportunity to eat a piece of shortbread, which was surprisingly good.
“I must say,” he remarked in a conversational tone, “I’ve never, ever tasted better shortbread.”
Mrs. McSporran got to her feet and beamed on him. “I’ll make you up a box to take home.”
“You look to me like a verra intelligent woman,” said Hamish while inside his head a voice jeered that she really looked like a demented ferret. “Now, Mr. English prided himself on his honesty and I am afraid he insulted an awful lot of people.”
“That he did.” She resumed her chair and smoothed down her skirt with work-roughened hands. “When Mrs. Walters told us she was engaged to the man, we was struck all o’ a heap. He said awful things to me and everybody. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You needn’t tell me what he said. But did you hear anybody threatening to kill him?”
“Oh, the whole o’ Cnothan. But nobody really meant it.”
“I may need to come back with a social worker to speak to Fairy.”
“Oh, dinnae dae that! Social workers are baby snatchers.”
“Let’s leave it for the moment,” said Hamish.
Before they left, she gave him a box of shortbread. Hamish thanked her and said, “My friend Dick Fraser and his wife, Anka, have a bakery business ower in Braikie.”
She clutched his arm. “Their baps are the best in Scotland. Can you get me the recipe?”
Hamish promised to try.
Outside, he said to Charlie, “I’ll call Priscilla and see if she’ll join us.”
“Why?”
“It’s half term. We might find Fairy playing somewhere and we can interview her if we’ve got a female here.”
“She’s not official.”
“Aye, but if we turn up here wi’ a social worker, they’ll be fleeing to the hills with their bairns.”
Priscilla’s tones were not friendly in the slightest. “So you’ve remembered to say hullo when you’ve decided you need help?”
“Aw, come on, Priscilla. I’ll take you to lunch?”
“In Cnothan? No thanks. Oh, look, I’ll come over and bring a picnic basket. See you.”
CHAPTER THREE
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
—Groucho Marx
The McSporrans lived in a neat little bungalow only a few yards from the church. They found Fairy. She was perched on the wall of the graveyard, staring openmouthed at Priscilla. “Are you a fillum star?” she asked.
“No, I’m a computer programmer. I would like to talk to you.”
Fairy nipped down from the wall. She was a small ginger-haired child with green eyes.
“I waud talk to you, miss,” she said. “But them’s the polis and my ma says she’ll beat the living daylights out o’ me if I ever talk tae the polis again. And the minister says I’ll burn in hell.”
“Okay.”
* * *
“This isnae right, Hamish,” complained Charlie. “Whatever you say, it’s chust not legal.”
“I’ll worry about it when the time comes.”
“Anyway, why are they all so frightened o’ the social workers?”
“It was over twenty years ago now but in Orkney the children were dragged screaming from their mothers. The charge was child abuse. Some rubbish about satanic beliefs. Well, by the time it was proved a load o’ rubbish, the bairns had been pretty much traumatised.”
“Fairy’s certainly talking a lot,” said Charlie. They could just make out the lilt of her voice as she talked to Priscilla. “Do you never get fed up with this policing business, Hamish?”
“From time to time,” said Hamish cautiously. “Not thinking of leaving, are you?”
Charlie shrugged. “Where would I go? I joined the police because there’s no work for me on the island. There’s the fishing but there’s no room for anyone else. But I miss it. It’s the most beautiful place in the whole wide world.”
Hamish’s phone rang. It was Jimmy Anderson. “Guess what?”
“What?” said Hamish patiently.
“It isnae murder.”
“What the hell is it? The wrath of God?”
“No foul play. English simply staggered into the peat bog and sank.”
“He could have been marched there at gunpoint,” said Hamish.
“Listen, laddie, if you want tae keep your job, keep your trap shut. Everyone here’s happy. Case closed. Goddit?”
“I’ve got it,” said Hamish. “What if…?” But Jimmy had rung off. Hamish told Charlie the news.
Charlie was just about to say something when Priscilla came in. She patted Fairy on the head and told her to run along.
“So what did you get?” asked Hamish.
“I think she’s telling the truth, but she begged me not to say anything because the minister had called and her mother had given her a whipping for telling lies.”
“It doesnae matter now,” said Charlie. “Case closed. The man wasnae murdered. He just staggered into the peat bog.”
“I don’t like it,” complained Hamish when they were enjoying their picnic. “A man as arrogant as English—remember, he was a bit drunk—wouldn’t cross over the moors. He didn’t know the land around here. He’d stomp down the middle of the road, defying me to come and get him.”
Hamish took out his phone and called Jimmy. “Who did the autopsy?” asked Hamish.
“Karen Black. Usual chap’s down wi’ the norovirus.”
“I want a look at that body,” said Hamish. “I don’t know this Karen Black.”
“Well, get down to the procurator fiscal’s fast because his mother’s coming up.”
“He’s still got a mother? I thought he would have bored her to an early grave. Right, I’m off.”
Charlie looked reluctant and Priscilla said it was time she packed to go back to London so Hamish said he could go on his own.
* * *
A brisk wind was blowing as he drove across the moors under the shadow of the great mountains of Sutherland. Then as he crested a hill, there lay before him the long straight road to Strathbane, the town that Hamish considered a blot on the beauty of the Highlands.
He drove directly to the mortuary beside the procurator fiscal’s office. It had been described in the press as a disgrace but nothing had been done to modernise it. Families used to seeing mortuaries on television with scientific instruments all around usually left the Strathbane mortuary in shock. It looked like a derelict garage. The door wasn’t even locked. He opened it and went in.
The body of the late Paul English was lying on a wooden table covered in a blanket. Hamish gently bared it. The peat had preserved it beautifully. The body was wrapped in a hospital gown. Hamish peeled it off and then turned the body over. He let out a hiss of surprise. At the back of the neck was a little roll of fat, and when he lifted it with one gloved finger there was a clear mark of a stab wound. He took out his iPad and photographed it from every angle.
He rearranged the body and went next door to the procurator fiscal’s office. The procurator was away visiting relatives in Inverness and his secretary said she had no authority to start up a murder enquiry so Hamish told her he was about to charge her with perverting the course of justice and covering up a murder until she turned pale and picked up the phone.
* * *
George, Colonel Halburton-Smythe, was sitting on the terrace of his hotel accompanied by Charlie and Hamish’s two dogs. “So, you really are thinking of quitting the force?” said George. “I mean, where would you go?”
“Anywhere in the Outer Hebrides. I’m miserable here. Too big, too clumsy, and I hate police work.”
“You could stay here and…and…be the hotel policeman.”
“That’s grand of you, George, but I’d like to go home. I’ve saved a bit. Maybe manage to get a wee croft.”
The little colonel began to feel miserable. Charlie Carter was his first real
friend. Usually he barricaded himself with petty snobbery, always ashamed that his family background had been in trade. He had nourished hopes that his beautiful daughter would marry some lord or other, but now he wished with all his heart she would marry someone like Charlie.
Charlie’s phone rang. He listened and then said, “I’m coming.” He rang off and turned to George. “I’m sorry. That was Hamish. Paul English was murdered after all.”
* * *
Hamish was in trouble. Blair was raging, trying to say he had stabbed the body himself, and only the intervention of Peter Daviot—who had just received a telephone call from his wife saying that dear Priscilla had asked that Hamish be given every help—had stopped the fuming Blair in his tracks.
Then Hamish had suggested that Paul might have phoned someone and that his mobile might still be down in the peat bog. If they took a strong metal detector, the ground being still dry, they might be able to locate it.
But when everything had been assembled and they were leaving headquarters, the weather of Sutherland had made one of its mercurial changes and heavy squally rain was blowing in from the west. By the time they got to the peat bog, it was once more a sodden, dangerous morass. Blair, beside himself with bad temper, jumped up and down in a rage. The ground gave way and he began to sink. By the time the fire brigade arrived to rescue him, he had cursed and sworn at having his head held above the bog by Hamish.
He was still cursing and raging about highland idiots who couldn’t leave well alone when Charlie suddenly snapped.
“Oh, shut up, ye nasty wee man,” he shouted. “I wish tae God we’d left ye!”
A triumphant grin crossed Blair’s fat features. “I charge you, Charles Carter, with threatening the life of a superior officer. Get the cuffs on him, laddies.”
Nobody moved. “I’m ordering ye,” roared Blair.
“I didnae hear a thing,” said Jimmy Anderson. “We’d best be getting back. I see the ambulance turned up as well.” He went over and had a word with the paramedics. They came rushing over with a stretcher. Blair tried to fight them off but Jimmy said soothingly that the poor man’s brain had been turned by the ordeal so he was strapped into a straitjacket. As he was carried off, he looked at Charlie with murder in his eyes and Hamish shuddered.
The finding of the body had not been released to the press and so headquarters were able to cover up their mistake. It was back to plodding work again.
To his distress, Charlie was chosen to interview the minister, Maisie Walters, Hamish having persuaded Jimmy that women always felt safe with Charlie and would often tell him things they would not tell anyone else.
At first, it looked as if she would have liked to have slammed the door in his face, but realising it might make her look guilty of something, she let him in. Charlie, in his quiet, lilting voice, told her about the murder of her fiancé. She clutched hold of the arm of a chair for support. Charlie helped her to sit down.
“I’ll chust be making you a cup o’ sweet tea. Stay there!”
When he returned with a cup of tea laced with whisky he had found in a cupboard, she drank it gratefully. “Do you want me to call anyone?” asked Charlie.
“No. It’s the shock. Who would want to murder Paul?”
The truthful answer, thought Charlie, was just about everyone, but he said gently, “That is what we must find out. How long had you been engaged?”
“Just the three weeks before he died. Paul was very religious. He prided honesty.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she said harshly, “The engagement was broken off. So there!”
“Why?”
“We didn’t see eye-to-eye and God told me to send him away.”
“We’ll be looking into his background. I don’t think, as I recall, he had been married afore.”
“No, he was very attached to his mother. She was to live with us after we were married. But the poor soul is suffering from shock.”
“Wouldn’t that have been difficult for you?”
“It might have been but I told Paul she would need to respect the fact that I was the lady of the house and we’d get on grand.”
“And he agreed?”
“Oh, yes.”
First lie, thought Charlie. That was a lie.
“You are a very attractive and perceptive lady,” said Charlie. “Were you ever married afore this?”
“Oh, yes. My husband was a manager on one of the oil rigs. Goodness, it was boom time. He made such a lot of money. But he died eight years ago of cancer. I had once wanted to be an actress because I have a good presence but I felt the call of God and took orders instead.”
Felt the call of showing off in the pulpit to a captive audience, thought Charlie cynically.
“I don’t want to distress you at this bad time, ma’am, but there is the question of the wee girl, Fairy, and what she said she saw.”
“I’ve been hard on that lassie, but you see Paul was interested in the theatre, like me. We have the panto here at Christmas and some concerts, but we were going to put on Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo. It’s a steamy play and we were rehearsing. But the Kirk Session got to hear of it and said it was indecent. Can you believe such a thing! So of course we didn’t go on with it but they made me feel so ashamed, I didn’t want anyone to know we had even thought of it. I’m sorry I was rough on wee Fairy but it’s hard when everyone expects you to be a saint.”
“I will be having a word with Fairy’s mother,” said Charlie. “You don’t need to describe the play. Just that the Kirk Session thought a concert with a lot of people getting parts would be better. Do they drop their drawers in The Rose Tattoo? Sorry to sound so vulgar.”
“No, that bit really was the wee lassie’s imagination.”
Another lie, thought Charlie. She should know by now that all us highlanders have got PhDs in bullshit and you cannae bullshit the bullshitters.
“I won’t be troubling you any mair the day,” said Charlie.
“You can stay to tea if you would like.” She gave him a coy smile.
“That’s right kind of you but I got a murderer to find.”
* * *
Charlie drove slowly back to Lochdubh. The rain had stopped and he opened the side window, breathing in the wind blowing the scent of the isles all the way from the west. Lochdubh had seemed a paradise when he had first been transferred from Strathbane. But now he could not understand how Hamish could remain so calm. Hamish’s previous sidekicks had been lucky in that they were more interested in things other than police work: Dick with his passion for baking; Clarry the chef, now at the hotel; and Willie Lamont gone to the restaurant trade. The nastiness of Blair, the bullying, the sight of dead bodies did not seem to impinge on their souls.
He would have been surprised to know that worry about him had brought the colonel and Hamish together.
Summoned to the hotel, Hamish listened carefully to George’s story about how Charlie longed to go back to South Uist. “I’m sure you’ll try to stop him going,” said George miserably, “but I think he would be happier out of the force.”
Hamish and George were seated in a corner of the hotel lounge. The colonel looked impatiently at the tall lanky policeman wondering, for the umpteenth time, why Hamish had broken off his engagement to Priscilla.
“Actually,” said Hamish slowly, “I am worried. I’d miss him sore but here’s the problem.” He told him about his fears concerning Blair.
“But I shall tell Peter Daviot!” said the colonel, appalled.
“Wouldn’t work. Blair can crawl his way out of anything.”
“I could give Charlie money for a croft but I fear he wouldn’t take it,” said the colonel.
“No, he would not. I know he’s got a bit put by. Let me think.”
Hamish switched on his iPad and looked for croft land for sale in South Uist. “Look, there’s plots at Ardmore. Offers of thirty thousand pounds. He’s a young man. Surely he could get a loan or a mortgage. I’ve got a fourth cousin, Geordi
e Struthers, in South Uist. I’ll dig up his number and get him to meet Charlie and lure him to the croft land.”
“I could always visit,” said the colonel wistfully, and Hamish was sorry for him for the first time as he saw the loneliness peering out of his eyes.
Hamish felt sad at the thought of losing such an amiable policeman as Charlie. Strathbane would find—if Blair had anything to do with it—someone really horrible to replace him.
As the summer dragged on, Hamish thought of it as the plodding days. Charlie had promised to stay until the case was closed, but nothing seemed to break. One day Hamish managed to meet Blair’s wife for a coffee. She listened carefully as he told her his fears about Blair. But she laughed them off for the simple reason that Mary did not want to know. Her marriage to the drunken detective had got her off the streets and she felt she knew how to manage him.
* * *
After Charlie had given Hamish his report that evening, Hamish said, “It does make me think our reverend might be a murderess. Maybe he told her the engagement was off. If she had been dropping her knickers for him and was not that sort of woman, she’d be thirsting for revenge. Anyway, I would like you to stay a bit and then me and George have a plan for you.”
“Aye? What’s that?”
“It’s like this, Charlie, you’ve lost your taste for police work and I don’t think you’ll get it back. Me and George know of some croft land for sale in South Uist. You could get a mortgage or a loan. Put a caravan on it until you get a bit o’ dosh. Few sheep. All set. There’s a big trade in seaweed these days. You could try to get in on that. You got any folk there?”
“Not really. Most of the family left for America like I told you and there was just me. They had sold the house and croft so I was in digs and had to come here to make a bit o’ money because there was nothing there. Mind you, I could have gone with them to America but I couldnae bear to be that far from the isles.”
“Aye, well, I want to keep you away from Blair as much as possible. I think the drink is finally turning his brain.”
