Death of a Dustman hm-17

by M C Beaton

  “Why did you come?” asked Martha, as Clarry washed and she dried.

  “Just to say that if your man is beating you, you should report it,” said Clarry.

  “He’s not beating me,” said Martha. “Besides, say he was, I couldn’t support the children. They’d be taken away from me.”

  Clarry looked down at her fragile figure. “That would not happen for I would not let it happen, lassie. That’s the lot. Now let’s see if we can give those kids of yours some exercise.”

  Clarry improvised a game of rounders with a broom handle and an old tennis ball. The children ran about screaming with laughter. Martha felt tears welling up in her eyes. When had she last heard her children laugh?

  ♦

  “So that’s settled then,” said Mrs. Fleming triumphantly as the members of the council looked back at her, feeling as if they had all been beaten and mugged. In vain had they protested at the cost of the proposed scheme. Mrs. Fleming had bulldozed her way through all their objections.

  She returned to her office where Fergus was waiting patiently. She took a tape measure out of her drawer. “Now I’ll just measure you for that uniform.”

  Fergus felt bewildered. He had double the salary, and not only that, he had a chance to bully the villagers. Not one can or bottle or newspaper should make their appearance in the general rubbish. He began to feel elated. The good times were coming. The thought of a drink to celebrate flickered through his brain, but he dismissed it. As Mrs. Fleming measured and made notes, he felt increasingly buoyed up by his new status.

  He, Fergus Macleod, was now an environment officer.

  ♦

  Martha, from the position of her cottage, could see part of the winding road that led into Lochdubh. She also knew the sound of the garbage truck’s engine.

  “Dad’s coming!” she shouted.

  Clarry thought that it was as if the game of rounders had turned into a game of statues. The children froze in mid-action. The sound of the truck roared nearer. Then they crept into the house. “You’d better go,” said Martha to Clarry.

  “Remember, lassie,” said Clarry, “I’m just down the road. You don’t need to put up with it.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide and frightened, willing him to go.

  Clarry ambled off and turned the corner to the waterfront just as Fergus’s truck roared past.

  Fergus parked the truck. Martha went out to meet him. Her husband’s first words made her heart sink. “We’re going to celebrate tonight.”

  Celebration usually only meant one thing. But Fergus was more eager for his new job than for any drink. He carried a box of groceries into the kitchen. There was Coke and crisps and chocolates for the children. There was an odd assortment of groceries – venison paté, various exotic cheeses, parma ham, bottled cherries and cans of fruit. Martha thought wistfully of Clarry’s offering of steak.

  “What are we celebrating?” she asked timidly.

  “I am Lochdubh’s new environment officer,” said Fergus. He proudly told her of his increased salary, of the new truck, of the greening of Lochdubh.

  For the Macleod family, it was a strangely relaxed evening. Martha prayed that the children would not mention Clarry’s visit, and, to her relief, they did not. They had become so wary of their father’s rages that they had learned to keep quiet on all subjects at all times.

  ♦

  For the next few weeks it seemed as if success was a balm to Fergus’s normally angry soul. He even chatted to people in the village. Clarry felt obscurely disappointed. He had been nourishing private dreams of being a sort of knight errant who would rescue Martha from a disastrous marriage.

  Martha had never known Fergus to go so long without a drink before. She was still frightened of him, like someone living perpetually in the shadow of an active volcano, but was grateful for the respite.

  Then one morning, flyers were delivered to each household in Lochdubh announcing a meeting to be held in the church hall to discuss improvements to Lochdubh.

  Hamish, along with nearly everyone else, went along.

  Mrs. Fleming was on the platform. She was wearing a black evening jacket, glittering with black sequins, over a white silk blouse. Her long black skirt was slit up one side to reveal one stocky, muscular leg in a support stocking. She announced the Great Greening of Lochdubh. Villagers listened, bewildered, as they learned that they would need to start separating the garbage into various containers. New bottle banks and paper banks would be placed on the waterfront on the following day.

  “What’s a bottle bank?” whispered Archie Maclean, a fisherman.

  “It’s one o’ thae big bell-shaped metal bins, like they have outside some of the supermarkets in Strathbane. You put your bottles in there.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re for,” said Archie. “Oh, michty me! Waud you look at that!”

  Mrs. Fleming had brought Fergus onto the platform. The other members of the council had suggested that a uniform of green overalls would be enough, but Mrs. Fleming had given the job of designing the uniform to her nephew, Peter, a willowy young man with ambitions to be a dress designer.

  The audience stared in amazement as Fergus walked proudly onto the platform. His uniform was pseudo-military, bright green and with epaulettes and brass buttons. On his head he wore a peaked cap so high on the crown and so shiny on the peak that a Russian officer would kill for it. He looked for all the world like the wizened dictator of some totalitarian regime.

  Someone giggled, then someone laughed out loud, and then the whole hall was in an uproar. Fergus stood there, his long arms hanging at his sides, his face red, as the gales of laughter beat upon his ears. He hated them. He hated them all. He would get even.

  ♦

  The following day Hamish strolled down to the harbour to watch the work on the new hotel. Jobs were scarce in the Highlands, and he was pleased to see so many of the locals at work.

  “Hamish?”

  He swung round. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe stood there. He felt for a moment that old tug at his heart as he watched the clear oval of her face and the shining bell of her hair. But then he said mildly, “Come to watch the rivals at work, Priscilla?”

  “Something like that. It worries me, Hamish. We’ve been doing so well. They’re going to take custom away from us.”

  “They haven’t any fishing rights,” said Hamish easily. “That’s what most of your guests come for – the fishing. And you don’t take coach parties.”

  “Not yet. We may have to change our ways to compete.”

  “I haven’t seen a sign of the new owner yet,” remarked Hamish.

  “I believe he’s got hotels all over Europe.”

  “Any of your staff showing signs of deserting?”

  “Not yet. But oh, Hamish, what if he offers much higher wages? We’ll really be in trouble.”

  “Let’s see what happens,” said Hamish lazily. “I find if you sit tight and don’t do anything, things have a way of resolving themselves.”

  “How’s your new copper getting on?”

  Hamish sighed. “I thought the last one, Willie Lamont, was a pain with his constant cleaning and scrubbing and not paying any attention to his work. One new cleaner for sale and he was off and running. Now I’ve got Clarry. That’s the trouble wi’ living in Lochdubh, Priscilla. At Strathbane, they say to themselves, now which one can we really do without, and so I get Clarry. Oh, he’s good-natured enough. And he’s a grand cook, but he smells a bit and he iss damn lazy.” Hamish’s accent always became more sibilant when he was upset. “If he doesn’t take a bath soon, I’m going to tip him into the loch.”

  Priscilla laughed. “That bad?”

  “That bad.”

  “And what’s all this greening business?”

  “It’s that bossy woman. You weren’t at the church hall?”

  “No.”

  “She is from the council, and she wants us to put all our rubbish into separate containers. There come the big bins.�
�

  Priscilla looked along the waterfront. A crane was lifting the first of the huge bell-shaped objects into place. “We don’t like change,” she said. “They’ll rebel. They won’t put a single bottle or newspaper in any of those bins.”

  “Ah, but you haven’t seen the green dustman yet. There he is!”

  Fergus, resplendent in his new uniform, had appeared. He was standing with his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels, his face shadowed by his huge peaked cap.

  “Heavens,” said Priscilla faintly. “All he needs to complete that ensemble is a riding crop or a swagger stick.”

  “I think that uniform means trouble,” said Hamish. “Have you noticed that traffic wardens and people like that turn into fascist beasts the moment they get a uniform on?”

  “A dustman can’t do much.”

  “He can do a lot in the way of petty bullying. The Currie sisters didn’t give Fergus a Christmas box, and he didn’t collect their rubbish until they complained to the council.”

  “Well, there you are. Any bullying, they’ll all complain to the council, and then it’ll stop.”

  “If that Fleming woman will listen to anyone.”

  “What’s her game? Is she a dedicated environmentalist? It said on the flyer that she was in charge of the council’s environment department.”

  “I think, talking of bullies, that she likes to find ways of spending the taxpayers’ money to order people around. In fact, here she comes.”

  Mrs. Fleming drove along the waterfront while they watched. She got out of the car. Fergus strutted up to her.

  Priscilla exploded into giggles. “Would you believe it, Hamish? Fergus saluted her.”

  Hamish laughed as well. The summer days and lack of crime on his beat were making him lazier than ever and dulling his usual intuition. He did not guess that Fergus’s silly salute would make Mrs. Fleming not hear one word against him, and so set in train a chain of events which would lead to horror.

  ∨ Death of a Dustman ∧

  2

  The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwep ‘t, unhonor ‘d, and unsung.

  —Sir Walter Scott

  The next collection day passed without incident, and the following one. But then the boxes and wheelie bins were delivered and Fergus began to take his revenge.

  The elderly Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, were the first victims. This was very unfair for they were among the few residents who had actually separated their rubbish into boxes and had put the rest into the wheelie bin. They found the boxes had been emptied of cans, bottles and papers, but the wheelie bin was still full and on it was a note on green paper.

  It said, “Garden rubbish is to be burnt. F. Macleod. Environment Officer.”

  “What does he mean, ‘garden rubbish’?” asked Nessie. “We haven’t got any.”

  “Haven’t got any,” echoed her sister, who had the irritating habit of repeating the last words anyone, including herself, said. “I’ll get a chair, get a chair.” For the bin was too large for the small sisters to look into easily.

  Jessie carried out a kitchen chair and, standing on it, lifted the plastic lid and peered down into the bin. “There’s just those dead roses, the ones that were in the vase, that we threw out, threw out.”

  “I’m going to write to the council,” said Nessie.

  ♦

  “He hasn’t taken the garbage,” complained Clarry.

  “Where’s the wee man’s wretched wheelie bin?” asked Hamish. “You’re supposed to use it, not leave it in bags.”

  “Och, I thought that wheelie bin would be grand for the hen feed,” said Clarry.

  Hamish sighed. “Get it out and put the garbage into it, Clarry. We’re now living under a dictatorship.”

  ♦

  And so it happened all round the village. After all, it was the villagers some years ago who had taken away the network-type metal baskets from the waterfront to use as lobster pots. Highland ingenuity had therefore found many uses for the wheelie bins other than the one for which they were intended. They were used to store all sorts of implements and cattle feed. Children played games at wheeling each other up and down the waterfront in them and their parents duly received threatening green notes from the dustman.

  Letters of complaint poured into Strathbane Council. Mrs. Fleming hailed originally from Hamilton in Lanarkshire. She thought all Highlanders were lazy and difficult and just plain weird. And so she did not trouble to answer even one of the letters. She told her secretary to throw them all away.

  ♦

  “I’ve got a wee job for you, Clarry,” said Hamish. “Our job is to protect everyone in this village and that includes a pest like Fergus Macleod. Get round there and tell him to go easy. He’s leaving garbage uncollected for this reason and that reason, and the atmosphere is getting ugly.”

  Clarry brightened at the thought of seeing Martha again. “Right, sir.”

  “And Clarry. Order yourself a new uniform from Strathbane.”

  Clarry looked down at his round figure. “Why?”

  “That one’s all old and shiny, and when did you last have a bath?”

  Clarry blushed and hung his head.

  “Aye, well, why don’t you nip into the bathroom and have a bath, and I’ll do what I can wi’ your uniform.”

  Clarry meekly went off to the bathroom. Hamish opened up the ironing table in the kitchen and began to sponge and clean and press Clarry’s uniform.

  In the bathroom, Clarry wallowed in the hot water like a whale. Then he towelled himself dry and opened the bathroom cupboard and peered at the contents. There was an unopened bottle of Brut on the top shelf. Clarry lifted it down and opened it, and then splashed himself liberally with it. He put on clean underwear and shambled into the kitchen and collected his cleaned and pressed uniform from Hamish with a muttered, “Thanks.”

  Hamish reeled back a bit before what smelled like a tidal wave of Brut, but charitably said nothing, hoping that the fresh air would mitigate the smell once Clarry was on his way.

  ♦

  Clarry walked slowly along the waterfront. It was another beautiful day. Recipes ran through his mind. He stopped outside the Italian restaurant and studied the menu.

  “Anything you fancy, Officer?”

  Clarry turned round and found himself facing an elderly man. “I’m Ferrari, the owner,” the man said.

  “I like Italian food,” said Clarry amiably, “but I hope you don’t use too much basil. That’s the trouble these days. People go mad wi’ the herbs and everything smells great and tastes like medicine.”

  “You like cooking?”

  “It’s my hobby,” said Clarry proudly.

  Mr. Ferrari eyed him speculatively. Hamish’s previous constable, the cleanliness freak, Willie Lament, had left the police force to marry Ferrari’s pretty relative Lucia. The restaurant chef was leaving at the end of the month.

  “You must come for a meal one evening,” said Mr. Ferrari. “As my guest, of course.”

  “That’s very kind of you, sir,” said Clarry. He had a suilden dream of sitting in the restaurant in the evening, looking at Martha in the candlelight. Her husband couldn’t stay sober that long, he might even drop dead, and then…and then…He beamed at Mr. Ferrari. “I might take you up on that offer. Would it be all right if I brought a lady?”

  “My pleasure, Officer. Now you can do something for me. That dustman is picking through the restaurant garbage and leaving most of it. We have too many cans and bottles to put into those little boxes.”

  “I’m on my way to have a word with him.”

  “Good. Between ourselves, Officer, it is time you did. The feeling against that man is running high, and if he is not stopped, something nasty might happen to him.”

  I wish it would, thought Clarry as he touched his cap and walked away.

  Clarry had never married. He had enter
ed the police force because his mother had thought it a good idea. He had lived with his mother until her death a year before his move to Lochdubh. Lazy and unambitious, he had never risen up the ranks. His mother had seen off any woman who looked interested in him. The policewomen he had occasionally worked with terrified him. He privately thought the move to Lochdubh was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He loved the village. He liked his kind, laid-back boss. He thought again of Martha. There was something about her faded prettiness, her crushed appearance, that touched his heart. He turned up the lane leading to Martha’s cottage. In his heart, he hoped against hope that the dustman would not be at home.

  The baby was in its pram outside. Clarry made clucking noises at it and then rapped on the door. The eldest boy, Johnny, opened the door. “Father at home?” asked Clarry.

  The boy looked nervously over his shoulder. Fergus appeared. He was wearing an old shirt and jeans. “What is it?” he snapped.

  “May I come in?” asked Clarry.

  “No, we’ll talk outside.”

  Fergus walked out and shut the door behind him.

  Clarry removed his peaked cap and tucked it under one arm. “It’s like this, sir. You are causing a great deal of distress among the villagers. You are not collecting their rubbish, and you are leaving nasty wee notes.”

  “And what’s that to you? It’s a council matter. Any complaints and they can write to the council.”

  “I am here to warn you, you might be in danger.”

  Fergus snickered. “From this bunch o’ wimps? Forget it.”

  Over the dustman’s shoulder, Clarry could see Martha at the window. She gave him a wan smile.

  Normally amiable, Clarry could feel rage burning up inside him as he looked down into the sneering face on the dustman. “You are a nasty wee man,” said Clarry. “I’ve given you a warning, but it would be a grand day for the village if you were killed.” He turned and walked away and then turned back at the garden gate. “By God, man, I could kill you myself.”