by M C Beaton
After an hour of lurid revelations, Barry Owen got to his feet. He was wearing a denim shirt, jeans and trainers, no robes. He raised his arms. "You have left all your troubles with me so they no longer exist. God be with you."
And that was that. They all rose to their feet and made their way to the exit. One woman passed Hamish and he noticed that the pupils of her eyes looked unnaturally dilated. He had planned to interview Barry Owen when the "service" was over, but he wondered rapidly whether he should pose as a new member of the congregation. From time to time his photo had been in the newspapers, but always just a small picture and in uniform.
He was still wondering what to do as he rose to his feet when Barry approached him.
"Welcome, brother." He had a deep, sonorous voice.
"Welcome," echoed Hamish.
"How did you hear of us?" asked Barry.
"Och, you know how it is," said Hamish. "I overheard someone talking about it."
"And what troubles you, brother?"
"Maybe another time. I see folks are leaving."
Barry put a hand on Hamish's shoulder and stared up into Hamish's hazel eyes. "I am on call night and day. Speak, brother."
"I don't think you can help me," said Hamish. "My troubles are not sexual."
"We talk of other things," said Barry. "But most people are plagued with sins of the flesh."
"I've often wondered why when anyone thinks of sin, they think of sex," said Hamish, his treacherous Highland curiosity aroused. "What about malicious gossip, ill will, unkindness?"
"You will find, brother, that all bad feelings stem from repressed sexuality."
"But I'm not sexually repressed."
"Ah, you think you are not, but excess of sex can in its way be a repression."
Hamish was about to complain that he was hardly suffering from that either, but decided on the spot to become a member and see if there was even a smell of drugs about the place.
"I suffer from deep depression," he lied. "Sometimes I just don't want to get out o' bed in the mornings."
"Ah, well, we must explore the root core of your depression. What is your job?"
"Nothing at the moment. I'm looking for one."
Barry reached up and put an arm around Hamish's shoulders. "There is a quality of innocence in you that I like. I tell you what, I could do with a helper here. I cannot afford to pay you much."
"What would my duties be?" asked Hamish.
"Cleaning up the place, helping to repair the fabric of the building. I would like the inside here painted green for a start. Green is a restful colour."
Hamish's mind worked at great speed. He was due two weeks' leave. He could demand it immediately for family reasons. Sergeant McGregor at Cnothan could take over his beat.
"When would you like me to start?"
Barry beamed. "Tomorrow is as good a time as any. Are you collecting the dole?"
"Yes."
"Oh, well, go on collecting it and I'll pay you seventy pounds a week."
"That's very kind of you," said Hamish, privately thinking it was an encouraging sign of villainy that Barry should be prepared to cheat the government, forgetting that cheating the government out of its dues was considered in the Highlands as a legitimate occupation. "Could you tell me when you started this… what is it, church or order or what?"
"I started a year ago. There's a wee room at the back. Come along and have a dram and I'll tell you about it."
Hamish followed him through a door at the far end of the hall. It was a lean-to kitchen with a table and four hard chairs. Dirty dishes were piled up in the sink. Barry saw Hamish looking around and said, "You can see why I need help. The place is a mess."
"I thought some of your ladies might help."
"Women, brother, women-these days we do not talk about ladies. They're all women and they are apt to get a crush on me."
Poor souls, thought Hamish. He accepted a glass of whisky.
"I notice you did not take up a collection," he said.
"We do that as they come in the door at the beginning. I teach them to have minds above material things and urge them to give generously. Money given to the church is never wasted."
"So how did you get the idea?" asked Hamish, sipping his whisky and noticing it was a very expensive malt.
"God came to me," said Barry, "and He said to me, Barry, He said, there are folks out there with deep secret personal problems which are blocking the light of the spirit. Get them to come to you, urge them to talk so that their souls may be cleansed and let in the light of the spirit. I advertised in the local paper, people came along and I am building up a nice congregation."
And probably a nice little moneymaker, thought Hamish cynically. It was amazing how people who claimed to have direct instructions from God always seemed to be justifying some selfish purpose.
"What time would you like me to start tomorrow?" he asked.
"About nine o'clock. You will find I am not very strict. Have you anywhere to live?"
"I've been sleeping in my car," said Hamish. "And yet you have kept yourself neat and clean. That says a lot for you. What is your name?" "Hamish George."
"Well, Hamish, there is a cot bed in the cupboard over there. I'll bring a pillow and a duvet. You can stay here for a bit. There's a stove there and coal and wood out the back."
"That's very good of you," said Hamish. "Maybe my depression got worse because I had nowhere to live and no useful work."
"Now you will be working for the Lord," said Barry. Hamish's quick ear caught an almost mocking lilt in Barry's voice. Hamish had been bending his head in what he hoped was an attitude of grateful humility, but he looked up quickly. Barry looked back with an unctuous smile.
"Here's the key," said Barry. "It's a spare. I have things to do. I'll be on my way and leave you to lock up and fetch your things."
Hamish waited until he had left and then he began to search the cupboards in the kitchen, under the sink, every nook and cranny, in the hope of finding a trace of drugs, but there was nothing. So here I am, he thought ruefully, wasting two good weeks' holiday working for a crackpot organisation. Well, he could give it a few days and if nothing came of it, he could always go back on duty.
As a sign of his goodwill, he washed up all the dirty dishes and cleaned the stove before locking up and walking to his Land Rover.
He drove back to police headquarters and spun them a tale about an urgent family crisis. Then he headed out back through the town. There were several shops still open for business although it was Sunday. He stopped at a red parking light and glanced idly out of the window. An expensive-looking boutique was open for business and in the window was a dress Hamish recognised. It was a twin of the one Felicity had been wearing when he had last seen her. The light turned to green. He drove round the corner and found a parking place and walked back to the boutique, which was called Lucille Modes.
He opened the door and went in. "How much is thon dress in the window?" he asked. "The silky one with the different colours."
"One hundred and ninety pounds."
Hamish blinked. "That's a fair bit."
The assistant said severely, "It is pure silk and designed by Lucille herself. There is one on the rack over there." She pointed. Hamish walked over and examined the dress. "Do you make many of these?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Lucille made only three. People around here don't like to pay that much and then run into a lot of other people wearing the same dress," said the assistant.
"It's a bit too much," said Hamish, backing towards the doorway.
"Thought it would be," said the assistant pertly.
Hamish drove thoughtfully back to Lochdubh. On his arrival, he mechanically went about his chores on the croft, made himself a simple meal, ate it and then sat down in the living room in his favourite armchair, clasped his hands behind his head and thought about Felicity.
How could she afford a dress like that? He went over every scrap of conversation he h
ad had with her, how on the day of Tommy's death she had looked so frightened when she had seen him outside Patel's, then about how she had snapped at him that first time when he had looked at the vegetables on the draining board in the chalet kitchen.
He suddenly sat up straight. Mushrooms. What had he heard about mushrooms?
Angela Brodie was on the Internet and seemed able to conjure up reams of information.
He hurried out and along to the doctors cottage. Angela answered the door.
"This a social call, Hamish?"
"No, I'm after some information about mushrooms."
"What kind?"
"The druggie kind."
"Come in. I think they're called shrooms. I'll see what I can get for you. Go in and take a seat and wait."
Hamish went into the living room. There was no sign of the doctor. Must be out on a call.
He sat down and picked up the day's papers, which he had not read.
After half an hour, Angela came in and handed him a printed sheet. "That's what I got, Hamish."
The page was headed "Liberty Cap/Magic Mushroom, Psilocybe semilanceata." There was an illustration of some spindly mushrooms. The liberty cap's habitat appeared to be in grass, fields, heaths and meadows. Season was given as late August to mid-January. Colour: buff when dry, brown with bluey tinge when wet. Thin black lines can also be seen through the lower margin when wet.
Then came the comments. "Psilocybe semilanceata has been used for thousands of years and is probably the most well known and most used psychedelic mushroom in the UK. The usual number of mushrooms ingested is between 25 and 50. Effects are similar to many of the psychedelics but often without the harshness and intensity that is associated with LSD. The effects come on between 10 and 40 minutes after ingestion and last approximately 3 to 4 hours. Eating fresh magic mushrooms is legal in the UK."
Hamish put down the printed sheet and said half to himself, "If it's legal, why was she so afraid of me?"
"What's this about?" asked Angela.
"These magic mushrooms. I think that wee lassie Felicity Maundy may have been peddling them."
"They grow pretty much everywhere, Hamish. She wouldn't get much for them. She'd get more from growing cannabis."
"I tell you, Angela, she was wearing a dress and I saw the twin o' that dress in Strathbane and it cost a hundred and ninety pounds and yet herself said she was on the dole."
Angela looked at him thoughtfully. Then she said, "Well, maybe sweet little Felicity was peddling something else."
Hamish thanked her and went back to the police station. How could a mushroom which caused a psychedelic effect lasting up to four hours be legal?
He phoned Strathbane. Jimmy Anderson was at home but when Hamish volunteered that he wanted to ask someone about drugs he was told that Detective Constable Sanders had just come in and was their expert.
Hamish introduced himself and then asked why shrooms, or magic mushrooms, were legal.
"Ah, but they're not really," said Sanders. "You pick them, that's legal. You prepare them, dry them, make tea from them, then it's illegal. It's illegal to change them in any way so I suppose you can say that someone picking them was actually changing them."
Hamish thought about the mushrooms he had seen on Felicity's draining board. They certainly had been small-capped and with thin stems.
"Would anyone get much for selling them?" he asked.
"Not that I've heard. People mostly pick them for their own use. Mind you, we raided a house last year after a tip-off and the attic floor was covered in those mushrooms."
"I wondered if you ever heard of anything against a young English lassie called Felicity Maundy."
Sanders's voice sharpened. "You mean the one that lives next door to Tommy Jarret?"
"Don't be telling anyone I asked," said Hamish, alarmed. "I'm told the case is closed."
"Look, I'm going off duty. Do you mind if I pop over to Lochdubh for a wee word?"
"Not at all," said Hamish. "I'll be waiting."
CHAPTER FOUR
"One side of what? The other side of what?" thought Alice to herself,
"Of the mushroom" said the Caterpillar, just as if she had
asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight.
– Lewis Carroll
Detective Constable Sanders had sounded brisk and intelligent on the phone. Hamish imagined him as being tall, dark and with severe features.
He was surprised when he opened the door some time later to what at first in the darkness looked like little more than a schoolboy.
"Sanders," announced the detective.
"Come in," said Hamish.
In the bright light of the kitchen, Sanders turned out to be a fairly small man with a thatch of thick blond hair, a boyish fair face with a snub nose covered in freckles and bright blue eyes.
"You look too healthy to be a drug expert," said Hamish.
"Well, I don't take the stuff myself." Sanders sounded amused. "So you're the infamous Hamish Macbeth."
"Take off your coat and sit down," said Hamish. "Tea?
Coffee?"
"Coffee would be grand. Dash of milk, no sugar."
When they were seated over their coffee mugs, Sanders said, "We meet at last. I've heard a lot about you." He held out his hand. "I'm Joe."
Hamish shook it.
"So, Joe, what brings you all this way?"
"It's the Tommy Jarret business. I wasn't satisfied."
"I wasn't either and I still am not," said Hamish.
"Tell me why."
"I think you had better tell me your reasons first. I don't want to get into trouble."
Sanders laughed. "Meaning you want to know if you can trust me? Here goes. I think the case was closed quickly on Tommy because he had a record, because he took drugs. There was a general feeling that he was asking for it, that one less junkie in Strathbane can only be good. It was the pathology report that bothered me first. Do you know there were traces of a sleeping drug in the body?"
Hamish nodded.
"Then there was that book he was writing. It all seemed too neat and easy that only chapter one detailing his early life should be found. Then there was the matter of fingerprints."
"You mean there were no fingerprints!"
"I'm not saying that. There were Tommy's, Parry McSporran's and Felicity's. But the door handle was wiped clean."
"The outside door?"
"Yes."
"But Parry found the body. Surely his prints would have been on the handle?"
"Parry said the door was wide open and he walked in. He said the bedroom door was open as well."
"Why did Parry go in? I forgot to ask him."
"He said he saw the front door wide open and walked across to make sure Tommy was at home. Parry said that although nobody locks their doors up there, he thought if Tommy had gone out and left the door open, it was tempting someone to steal his word processor."
Hamish leaned forward eagerly. "But footprints!"
"Now here we come to the real mystery," said Sanders. "From the bedroom through to outside, the floor had been wiped clean and there was a mop propped outside the chalet without a fingerprint on it."
"Then they can't say the case is closed!" cried Hamish.
"They have and it is. So what's your interest?"
Hamish decided to trust him. He told Sanders all about the visit from Tommy's parents, about Felicity and the dress and what he suspected about the mushrooms.
"But if she was messing with magic mushrooms," finished Hamish, "they would have found something when they searched her chalet."
Sanders remained silent, looking down into his mug of coffee.
"Neffer say they didnae search her chalet!" exclaimed Hamish.
Sanders raised his eyes. "No, they didn't. But acting on your information, I can organise a raid and let you know if we find anything. We'll check her bank account as well, see if she's been banking any unusual sums of money."
&nbs
p; "There's one thing I didnae tell ye," said Hamish. He described his visit to the Church of the Rising Sun and how he had taken leave to work there because it looked like Tommy had been a member.
Sanders began to laugh again. "Now I know why Blair calls you the worst headache in the police force. Man, what if you're recognised?"
"I'll take that risk."
"I'll get news to you somehow. I've always thought there was something wrong about that church. Now, I'd better go and get some sleep before I raid Felicity's place tomorrow."
"And I'd better go and borrow an old car from someone," said Hamish. "I'm supposed to have been sleeping in my car because I'm one of the homeless."
"You know that recluse Sean Fitzpatrick, who lives out on the Crask turn?"
"Aye."
"He bought a new car last year. His old one is round the back. It may still be working. He's like a crofter. They never throw an old car away, just keep it in the garden for spares."
"I'll try him now."
"It's nearly midnight."
"He's old. He's probably still awake."
* * *
Sure enough, when Hamish parked outside Sean Fitzpatrick's, he saw the lights were still on. He knocked at the cottage door and after a few moments, Sean answered it.
He sighed when he saw Hamish. "The reason I get the reputation of being a recluse," he growled, "is because I am one. So leave me alone."
"I chust wanted to know if I could rent your old car out the back."
"What for?"
"I've got two weeks' break and them in Strathbane don't like me driving around the police Land Rover."
"Its not insured.".
"I'll get it insured," lied Hamish.
"I've a feeling the only way I'm going to get rid of you is to let you have it. Wait and I'll get the keys and we'll see if it starts."
