“Now,” he said, “I’ll get the body into the wheelbarrow. Up there’s Fraser’s Gully. If I tip the body down there, it’s a long way down and it’ll get smashed on the rocks. With any luck, ferrets and crows and foxes will help to destroy the evidence.”
“Will you ever tell the police?”
“Oh, aye, when I figure the bastard’s decomposed enough. You wait here. I can manage this bit on my own.”
He got out and opened the back of the Land Rover. First he took out the wheelbarrow, and then he pulled the body out onto it. Grunting and swearing under his breath, he pushed the wheelbarrow up the steep incline to the edge of the gully.
At the very edge, he tipped the barrow and sent the body flying down. He heard it bouncing off the sharp rocks he knew were down there. Then there was silence.
He dropped Priscilla by her car on the waterfront. She had taken off the forensic suit when they were up by the gully, and he collected it from her.
“Don’t you want me to help you clear up the mess?” asked Priscilla.
“You’ve done enough. Go home.”
When Priscilla walked into the hotel, the night porter exclaimed, “Why, Miss Halburton-Smythe! You’re as white as a sheet.”
“I think I’ve a touch of flu,” mumbled Priscilla. She fled to the safety of her room, where she was violently sick. Thank God I never married him, she thought. I’m not cut out to be a policeman’s wife.
Sutherland is near the Gulf Stream and so can enjoy some unusually warm days in winter. Hamish blessed the mild days, which would help with the decomposing of the body, and cursed the frosts. He had found Prosser’s car and driven it to Inverness airport, where he left it in the car park.
Priscilla had left again without saying goodbye. He thought sadly that after all they had been through on that dreadful evening, she might at least have called to see how he was. He felt guilty because he could sense the ongoing tension in the village and he longed to tell them their worries were over.
But by the end of February, two hill walkers, peering down into the gully, saw the remains of Prosser and called the police. The body had been attacked by crows, eagles, buzzards, and foxes. There was little left but a skeleton and torn clothes.
The couple had phoned Strathbane so it was not until the evening of their discovery that Jimmy Anderson arrived at the station with the news.
“Is it Prosser?” asked Hamish.
“Looks like it.”
“They won’t have had any time to check his dental records.”
“Aye, but inside the lining of his coat, we found his real passport and a Cayman Islands bankbook. Guildford police have found his dentist and they’re sending up the records. He had a revolver as well, and we’re checking to see if it was used to kill Brandon—the sweep had his neck broken, Davenport had his head smashed, same with Betty Close. Brandon is the only one who was shot. They think Philomena was drugged and that’s why she lost control of the car. Anyway, according to our singing canaries in captivity, Castle and Sanders, they knew he was out to get Davenport. That’s why they set up the alibi for him. They said he got Stefan Loncar to put on a mask that evening so that people would think it was him. You remember, it was a Saturday and they swore they’d all been together most of the day.”
“I wonder why Stefan didn’t tell me he had stood in for Prosser that evening at the restaurant. Did they never check where they all were the day afterwards?” asked Hamish. “If Prosser hadn’t been seen on the Sunday, we might have guessed he was still up north.”
“They originally thought they were dealing with four very respectable businessmen, members of the Rotary and the Freemasons.”
“Poor Stefan. I wonder what Prosser did with the body.”
“Maybe he just paid him to leave the country by some other route.”
“I’d like to think so,” said Hamish, “but I doubt it.”
The next morning, Blair phoned Hamish. “We’ve found Prosser doon a gully up frae Drim.”
“How long had he been there?” asked Hamish innocently.
“Months, they think. The highland beasties have made such a meal o’ the corpse that there’s little left to tell the pathologist how he died. He probably tripped and fell in the dark. A lot of the bones the foxes hadn’t gnawed were broken. Anyway, his dentist has been quick off the mark. It’s him, all right, so get ower tae Drim and tell the woman she’s safe.”
Hamish drove to Drim. He was glad for Milly’s sake. Now she would be able to marry Tam.
“I’m so glad,” said Milly when he gave her the news. “I’ve been living in fear.”
“Where’s Tam?”
“He’s down at police headquarters following up the story. Then he’s writing up all the background on my husband. He’ll be away all day.”
“Are you all right here on your own? Do you want me to call Ailsa or Edie?”
“No, I’d like to sit here for a bit and be quiet.”
“Well, send me an invitation to the wedding.”
“What wed…? Oh, that. I’ll let you know.”
Castle and Sanders and their wives were brought to Scotland to the High Court in Edinburgh for trial. It went on for three months. They were charged with being accessories to the murder of Henry Davenport. But here, the prosecution came up against difficulties. They all swore they did not know that Prosser had meant to kill Davenport. They said he had been furious because Davenport had told them about a gold mine in Perthshire and had geological proofs to persuade them to put money into it. But there was no actual forensic proof that Prosser had killed Davenport, or, for that matter, the sweep. John Dean, the man who lived in the flat in the Canongate, was taken out of prison where he was serving time for running brothels in Edinburgh but he said he did not know Prosser had killed the prostitute, nor about any other murders.
The jury—or panel as it is called in Scotland—of fifteen was out for three weeks. They eventually came back with a verdict of not proven, a particularly Scottish verdict which means, we think you did it, we can’t prove it, don’t do it again.
But the jubilant four on leaving the court were arrested again and taken south to await trial for using forged passports, aiding and abetting a murderer, and every other charge the police could think to throw at them.
Hamish had attended the trial but he was not called to give evidence. He had lunch before he left at the Merlin Club with his friend David Harrison. “I’m right glad he’s dead,” said David. “After you said he might come after me, I’ve barely slept.”
Hamish thought guiltily of the people he had kept waiting in fear, and all to protect his cat.
Epilogue
Everything has an end.
—Proverbs
Lochdubh returned to its usual torpor. It was as if nothing terrible had ever happened. It had taken Hamish a long time to relax. Sometimes he watched real-life television forensic programmes and in one, the killer was identified by one of his own cat’s hairs. He had nightmares of them finding one of Sonsie’s hairs on the clothes of the dead man and identifying it as belonging to a wild cat; Blair would then make sure the police station was under scrutiny.
He had scrubbed the floor and the walls with bleach but he knew that luminol would betray the scrubbing and might even find a spot of blood he had missed.
But as ordinary lazy day followed another ordinary day, he began to relax. He called on Milly one day and found her weeding in the garden. “I’m going to have a bed of roses here,” she said.
“Aye, well you’d better get a hedge to protect them because the wind could destroy them. Where’s Tam?”
“Working.”
“When’s the wedding?”
Milly stabbed the trowel into the earth. “We haven’t decided yet.”