by M C Beaton
"At what time?"
Hamish thought hard. Felicity had arrived back at what time? Six o'clock. And he had seen her down at Patel's just before that. "Say about five," he said.
"I was in here listening to music," said Sean. "Didn't hear a thing. You know when I saw you, I thought for a moment you'd come about the monster."
"Monster? The Loch Ness Monster?"
"No, there's a lot of fuss over at Loch Drim. Two of the women saw a monster. They phoned the police in Strathbane, but whoever they spoke to told them to go and have a cup of black coffee."
"Why didn't they phone me?" asked Hamish crossly. "Drim is on my beat."
"Said it was too important for a local bobby to deal with."
"And how do you know this? Folks say you never see anyone or go anywhere."
"I go around to get my bit of shopping. Folks have a way of talking in front of me as if I'm deaf and invisible."
"That's your own fault. You never talk to anyone."
"I didn't retire to the Highlands of Scotland to talk to anybody."
"Why did you come here? Where in Ireland are you from?"
"Mind your own business, Officer."
"Well, if you can't help me," said Hamish, rising and walking to the door, "I'd better call over at Drim and take a look into this other business."
Sean's eyes twinkled up at him.
"I think you'll find Jock Kennedy, who runs the general store, has thought up a way of drumming up business."
"It would amaze me," said Hamish bitterly, "seeing how much they hate outsiders in Drim."
Hamish was always puzzled that two such contrasting villages as Lochdubh and Drim could be situated on his beat. Lochdubh always seemed light and friendly. Drim was all that on the surface, but underneath there were black passions among the villagers, easily stirred up.
He thought that perhaps it had a lot to do with the location. It lay at the end of a black sea loch surrounded by towering mountains. It was almost as if the geography had made the people turn inwards upon themselves, suspicious of strangers, and anyone from outside was a stranger.
He drove down the twisting road to the village and parked outside Jock Kennedy's general store.
The shop was closed up for the night so he knocked loudly at the side door which led to the Kennedys' flat over the store.
The burly figure of Jock Kennedy answered the door.
"What's all this about a monster?" asked Hamish.
Jock came out and closed the door behind him. "Walk a bit with me, Hamish. I don't want Ailsa getting any more daft ideas." Ailsa was his wife.
They walked down to the water's edge. Little waves rippled at their feet. A seagull called mournfully; in one of the cottages behind them, a woman admonished her child. Then there was silence, the silence of Sutherland, sometimes so complete it hurts modern ears.
Jock heaved a sigh, and then said, "I don't want Ailsa or her friend Holly to be encouraged in this nonsense."
"You'd best tell me what the nonsense is all about, Jock."
"They were out walking along towards the sea."
Hamish looked down at the black loch and then at the steep mountainsides which sloped straight down into the water.
"I've never been along there. I didn't know there was a path."
"You cannae see it from here. It's little more than a rabbit track. Ailsa and Holly went out the other evening. They are both on some exercise regime. They say just up almost at the head of the loch, they saw two great glaring green eyes staring at them out of some huge bulk in the water. It began to move silently towards them and they screamed and ran. Then they worked up all the other women in the village and reported it tae Strathbane police and were told to drink lots of black coffee. The police thought they'd been drinking hooch."
"There's been a lot of Highland drunks recently reporting sightings of UFOs," said Hamish. "It was the bad time to call."
"Anyway, I don't want them encouraged. There's a lot of phosphorescence in that loch and it produces queer effects."
"I'll just take a stroll along there," said Hamish. "We'll let it drop for the moment, Jock, but if anyone else sees anything, there'll have to be a proper investigation."
"Let's hope that'll be an end of it," said Jock. Hamish touched his cap and made his way along the edge of the loch. He found the path at the westward end of the village. As Jock had said, it was little more than a rabbit track. He strolled along. He was glad he had brought his torch, the towering mountains made the blackness of the night even blacker.
He welcomed the exercise. He wanted something to take his mind away from Tommy. After a while, he could hear the waves breaking on rocks ahead. So it would be around this point that Ailsa and Holly had seen their monster.
He swung his torch across the loch and let out a gasp as eyes stared straight back at him, eyes red in the torchlight. Then he laughed. Seals, nothing but seals. A whole colony of them. That must have been what Ailsa and Holly saw. He walked right to the sea, nonetheless, without coming across anything sinister.
His thoughts turned again to Tommy Jarret on the road back. It was a shame that one so young should have to die. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that the poor fellow had taken an overdose. Felicity had looked frightened at the sight of Hamish outside Patel's because she was an odd wispy creature who probably lived in some sort of private soap opera.
In the morning, he woke to marvel, not for the first time, at the mercurial changes the weather in the Highlands was capable of. Before he had gone to bed, the sky had been cloudless. Now it was raining steadily, with low clouds shrouding the tops of the mountains.
He did his chores about his croft at the back of the police station and then went indoors and changed into his uniform and phoned Strathbane police headquarters and asked to speak to Jimmy Anderson.
When Jimmy came on the line, Hamish asked if there had been any information from the pathologist. "You're too early, too soon," said Jimmy. "Give the man a bit o' time. You're not still suspecting murder?"
"I reserve judgement," said Hamish. "What was in thon book he was writing?"
"I don't know."
"What d'ye mean you don't know?" demanded Hamish sharply. "He was writing about his experience with drugs. There could have been some useful names in there. I thought maybe you'd taken some pages away."
"No, I didn't. Come on, Hamish. I grilled that bastard, 'member? Couldn't get the name of his suppliers out o' him. Why the hell would he put them in a book?"
"Just a thought," said Hamish huffily.
"He died of an overdose, plain and simple."
"While you're on the line, Jimmy, do you remember a couple of women in Drim reporting the sighting of a monster?"
"Not me. What are they up to in that nasty place? Trying to invent another Loch Ness Monster?"
"I shouldnae think so," said Hamish. "Do you 'member when that minister's wife and that television lassie produced that TV play featuring Drim? At first the tourists came in coachloads and the villagers didnae like it one bit. They even put a sign at the top of the road saying COACHES NOT WELCOME."
"Hamish, between the drunks up in your part of the world and the druggies down here, we get reports of monsters and UFOs every week."
"Just wondered."
"Well, wonder away and go back to your sheep." Hamish said goodbye and then debated what to do.
Then he decided to drive over to Glenanstey and have a word with Parry.
* * *
The birch trees around the chalet which Tommy had rented were weeping rainwater. Ferocious midges danced in and out of the raindrops. Hamish marvelled how the little beasts didn't get drowned. He knocked at Parry's door. There was no reply. He approached Tommy's chalet, wondering why there wasn't a policeman on duty. He tried the door and it opened. He went inside. Fingerprint dust was over everything. He stood in the doorway to the living room and looked around. The word processor stood on the table and beside it a small pile of t
ypescript. He walked over and sat down at the table, took out a pair of thin gloves and put them on and began to read. Chapter one, which is all that there was, proved to be a disappointment. Tommy had meant his book to be an autobiography and the first chapter dealt with his school days. It was not very well written, the language being too flowery and loaded with similes.
He switched on the word processor and managed to find the beginning of the book. He ran through it. Only chapter one. Well, what had he expected? He had expected that Tommy had been killed because there was something incriminating in his manuscript.
He switched off the word processor and made sure that he had replaced the pages of manuscript exactly where he had found them.
Then he went outside and looked around. A policeman came up and stared at him suspiciously.
"I'm Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh," said Hamish easily.
"PC Peter Harvey," said the policeman. "I hope ye have nae been in there. I'm supposed to be guarding it. I just popped into the village for a cup of tea. It's a hell of a wet day."
"So what's happening now?"
"Nothing much," said Peter, lighting a cigarette. "Strathbane says it's an overdose. The boy's parents will be along sometime to take away his stuff"
"Do you know if they found any drugs in the chalet?"
"Aye, they found a wee bit o' heroin."
"I'll just take a stroll into the village myself and have a cup of tea. Good idea. If you see Parry, tell him I'll be back."
Hamish walked through the rain to the village, which consisted of a small huddle of houses. There was no shop, the locals all driving to Lochdubh to do their shopping. But there was a tearoom run by a Miss Black, an incomer, English. She had set up her tearoom in what had once been the village store. As she provided strong tea and very good cakes and biscuits, she had built up a regular trade among the locals as well as people in other towns and villages in Sutherland, many driving in from as far away as Lairg.
As Miss Black had bought the village shop for very little and acted as baker and waitress, a complete one-woman operation, she managed to make a modest living.
She was an energetic old lady. Gossip had it she was a retired schoolteacher. Unlike a lot of incomers, life in the northern Highlands of Scotland obviously suited her. Hamish judged her to be almost seventy but she had very good skin and pink cheeks. Her snowy white hair was arranged in a simple style. She wore an ankle-length tartan skirt, a tartan waistcoat and a white frilly blouse.
The cafe was empty. "The weather's keeping everyone away but the police," she said when Hamish walked in. "What can I get you?"
"Tea and two of your scones and butter, please," said Hamish, taking off his oilskin and hanging it on a hook by the door. "Dreich weather."
"It is, indeed. I gather you're here because of that poor young man."
"Yes."
"So sad. I'd never have thought he would do a thing like that and him so happy with his young lady."
Hamish sat down at a table and looked at her curiously. "I didn't know he had a young lady."
"That little girl who lives at Parry's chalets. Felicity, that's it."
"I was led to understand, I don't know why, that they weren't that close."
"I thought they were in love, the way they were giggling and laughing together. Now, I'll get your tea."
Felicity had definitely said that she didn't know Tommy very well, that they were just neighbours. Why had she lied?
A group of wet tourists came in, chattering and laughing. Miss Black served Hamish and then went to attend to them. He ate his scones and drank his tea.
Half his brain was yelling at him to leave well alone. It was an accidental death. But the other half was fretting about Felicity.
He finished, rose, nodded to Miss Black and went out again. A high wind had risen, and as he left the village and walked the short distance to Parry's, he saw that above the rain clouds were rolling back, like a curtain drawn back by a giant hand. By the time he turned in at the gate of Parry's croft, sunlight was glittering on rain-washed grass and shining in puddles.
He waved to Peter, the policeman, and went straight to Felicity's chalet. The minute she opened the door to him and saw him, she began to cry. But Hamish felt there was something wrong, something stagy, about that crying. "Just a few more questions," he said.
She turned away and he followed her inside. She sat down, sniffling dismally into a tissue.
"Now, Miss Maundy," said Hamish, removing his peaked cap and setting it on the table and taking off his wet oilskin, folding it and laying it on a bare bit of floor next to the fireplace, "you told me that you and Tommy were just neighbours, nothing more, but I've been hearing reports that you were very close indeed."
She took another tissue from the box and scrubbed her eyes and then stared at him defiantly. "What if we were?"
"Nothing, but why did you lie?"
"Because you pigs always think the worst of everyone," she spat out with sudden venom.
"Been in trouble with the police before?"
She stared at him mulishly.
He leaned forward. "Look, Miss Maundy, all I'm trying to do is find out if Tommy just took an overdose. If you were fond of him, surely you'll want to help me find out about it."
"I've been asked questions and questions," said Felicity, "and that detective told me it was a simple case of accidental death."
The door opened and Peter, the policeman, walked in. "A word wi' ye outside," he said to Hamish.
Hamish followed him outside. "I phoned Strathbane on my mobile to report in and said you was here asking questions. I've been told to tell you to go about your own duties. No point in having the two of us here."
Hamish was almost glad that his mind had been made up for him. Forget about Tommy. Go back to a lazy, contented life.
'Til just get my coat and hat," he said.
"I didn't mean to get you into trouble," said Peter.
"That's all right." Hamish went back into Felicity's chalet. She was still sitting where he had left her. He picked up his oilskin and put on his cap. "Good day to you, Miss Maundy." He made his way out through the small kitchen. There was a selection of vegetables on the draining board, lettuce, carrots, mushrooms.
His Highland curiosity wouldn't even let the smallest thing go by.
"You a vegetarian?" he called.
The reaction was amazing. Felicity darted into the kitchen, her face flaming. "Get out!" she screamed. "Stop poking and nosing around.'"
He shrugged. "I'm going."
Now what was that all about? he wondered as he walked to his Land Rover.
By a great effort of will, he convinced himself in the following days that poor Tommy's death had indeed been an accident. He went out on his rounds, a burglary over in Braikie took up some time, as did his chores about the croft. The days had stayed sunny, days to relax and breathe in some of the cleanest, balmiest air in the world.
A week after the death of Tommy, he drove back to the police station with the windows of the Land Rover open, whistling "The Road to the Isles" and waving to people he knew.
And then a bright image of Tommy's young face rose in his mind. He whistled louder to banish it.
As he approached the police station, he could see two figures standing outside. As he drew nearer, with a sinking heart, he recognised Tommy Jarret's parents.
He parked the Land Rover and got out.
"We want to speak to you," said Mr. Jarret.
"Come into the station," said Hamish. He opened the kitchen door. "Would you like some tea?"
"No, thank you," said Mr. Jarret. "What we have to say is very important."
They both sat down at the kitchen table, the picture of middle-aged respectability.
Hamish sat down as well and said easily, "How can I be of help?"
Mr. Jarret took a deep breath.
"Our son was murdered and we want you to find out who did it."
CHAPTER THREE
I am �
� a mushroom
On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.
– John Ford
Hamish leaned forward. "You mean they found something in the pathologist's report other than heroin?"
"They found heroin, all right," said Mr. Jarret, "but they also found traces of a strong sleeping drug. Don't you see? Someone must have drugged him, injected the heroin into him and made it look like an accidental overdose."
"I thought there was something wrong about the whole business," said Hamish. "But surely the detectives in Strathbane are investigating the case. Why come to me?"
"Because they're not," said Mr. Jarret heavily. "They say it was a simple drug overdose and they won't listen to us."
"So how do they explain the presence of the sleeping drug?" demanded Hamish, exasperated.
"They say these drug addicts will take anything. They just don't want to know. That's why we came to you."
"Why me?"
"I heard on the grapevine that you were clever, that you had solved cases and let your superiors take the credit. Justice must be done." Mr. Jarret clasped his hands tightly. "I am prepared to pay you for your investigation."
"That would not be necessary," said Hamish, thinking hard. "It will be difficult for me. I can keep on asking around. Tell me about Tommy."
"He was so clever at school," said Mrs. Jarret, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "We had great hopes of him. He was going to be an engineer. He went to Strathbane Technical College and the first year was fine. During his second year, that was when he started acting strange. He had been living at home, with us, but then he said he was moving out to a flat to share with two others."
Hamish took out his notebook. "What were their names?"
"We only ever heard their first names. Angus and Bob."
"Address?"
"Number 244, Kinnock Tower, Glenfields Estate. We went there once. It was awful. Graffiti everywhere. And the smell! And the boys' flat was so bare. No furniture, only bedrolls on the floor. Not even a television!" Mrs. Jarret looked at Hamish in a bewildered way, urging him to share her amazement at the oddity of a home without a television set.
