“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.