The landscape still works on the imagination, thought Hamish, raising his eyes from the printed page. People come up here from the cities and begin to believe in ghosts and fairies before they’ve settled for very long.
Sarah gave a little sigh. “Nothing yet?” asked Hamish.
“Not yet. Need more time.”
Hamish began to read about water horses.
Of all the supernatural creatures flitting through the pages of folklore, none was so feared as the water horse, in Gaelic, Each Uisge. In my own childhood, we were forbidden to go near certain lochs which were dark and dangerous because they were said to be the haunts of water horses. In the Highlands with stormy seas, wave-lashed islands, short and rushing rivers and deep dark lochs, water power was feared and looked on as malignant. This malignancy often took the form of a horse that could change shape into a handsome young man or even an old woman. Indeed the water horse or kelpie as it was sometimes called could change form at will to lure its victims to their deaths.
“Got it! We’re in!” cried Sarah.
He went over to join her. “Blair’s new password?”
She nodded.
“What is it?”
“Shite. I thought it might be shit, but in Scotland people use the old form and say shite.”
“Nasty bugger.”
“Bring a chair over and we’ll see if we can get a report on Gilchrist’s belongings.”
Hamish obediently carried a hardback chair and placed it next to her and sat down. She flicked busily through various reports and then said, “Here we go.”
They eagerly read the contents of the dentist’s home. He had not left a will and police were still searching for any living relative. There was no evidence of a wife before Jeannie in Inverness. There had been no photographs at all. Odd that, thought Hamish. There was a bar in the living room stocked with the finest malt whiskies. Clothes were listed as tailored and expensive, silk shirts, handmade shoes. His car was a BMW only a few months old.
“Obviously earned a mint and spent it,” murmured Hamish. “But no photographs! Passport, birth certificate, school certificates, university and dental college, but no personal records of the holiday snapshot kind. Not even a wedding photograph. Damn, this iss not helping. I wish I could see the place.”
“There’ll be a policeman on duty outside the place. Couldn’t you just go over and chat to him and ask him if you could have a look around?”
“I could try. That’s if the roads are passable in the morning.”
“Will you be able to get home tonight?”
Hamish went to the window and looked out. In the hotel’s floodlights, he could see white sheets of snow savagely tearing across the courtyard below.
“Might have to stay the night,” he said slowly.
She looked at him. Their eyes locked. The air was suddenly charged with sexual tension. He took a half step towards her and then the door swung open and Mr. Johnson came in. “Weather’s terrible, Hamish,” he said. “I’ve arranged a wee room for you down by the office so you can stay the night. In fact, if you’ve finished here, I’ll take you down.”
“I don’t know,” said Hamish reluctantly. He looked hopefully at Sarah, but she was already switching off the computer. That air of sexual excitement had gone, not even a frisson.
“As a matter of fact, I am pretty tired,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Hamish.”
“Story of my life,” muttered Hamish as he followed the manager downstairs.
“What?” asked Mr. Johnson.
“Nothing,” said Hamish crossly. “Nothing at all.”
♦
He awoke in the morning to white stillness. The room allocated to him was one of the ones given to hotel servants. It contained the narrow bed on which he was lying, a wardrobe, chair and nothing else, not even a handbasin.
He got up and went to the window. The room was on the ground floor. He looked out at a wall of white. That was all he could see. A huge drift was blocking the view.
He took his underwear off the radiator – he had washed it and put it there to dry – and then wrapped the bedcover around his nakedness, went along to the narrow bathroom used by the staff, and took a shower. By the time he was fully dressed, he could hear the scrape of shovels outside the hotel in the courtyard and the roar of tractors as the outdoor staff began to dig paths around the hotel to free the snowbound cars.
There was a smell of frying bacon. He went through to the dining room where he found Sarah eating toast and marmalade. He felt suddenly shy of her, but she smiled at him in a friendly way and said, “How are we to get anywhere today?”
“We, Sherlock?” he asked, sitting down opposite her.
“I thought that if perhaps we went to Gilchrist’s house, two of us could charm our way past the policeman on duty, but I don’t see how we are going to be able to move.”
He looked out the long dining room windows. “It’s stopped snowing, and they’re better up here than they are in the cities at getting the roads cleared. As long as the snow stays off, we might be able to move. After breakfast, I’ll get my snowshoes on and go back to the police station and collect the Land Rover.”
“And you’ll take me with you?”
“Against police regulations, but I could always explain that I found you stranded and gave you a lift. I wonder if I could ask you a favour?”
“Go on.”
“Could you get back into that computer and see if there’s any reference to Gilchrist’s bank accounts?”
“I could, but I can tell you now, there was no reference to his finances.”
Hamish banged the table in frustration. “It’s aye the same,” he complained. “I cannae get the full picture because I’m nothing more than the village bobby.”
“You could change that.”
“Och, it would mean living in Strathbane and I couldnae bear that.”
Hamish relapsed into a moody silence.
The waitress came up to them. “More coffee?”
They both refused. Then she said, “Oh, Mr. Macbeth, Mr. Angus Macdonald was on the phone. He says not to forget the salmon.”
“How did he know I was here?”
“Mr. Macdonald always knows.”
“Who’s Mr. Macdonald?” asked Sarah.
“He’s the local seer. He claims to have the second sight.”
“And does he?”
“I think he’s a verra clever old gossip.”
“So what’s this about a salmon?”
“He wanted a river salmon, but chust look at the weather. I bought him one in the fishmongers in Braikie and the auld beast sussed out it wass a farm salmon and threatens me with all sorts of bad luck unless I get him the right one.”
Sarah looked at him curiously. “How did he know it was a farm salmon?”
“He waved his damn crystal ower it, but I think one o’ his gossips phoned him from Braikie.”
Sarah looked out at the white wilderness outside. “You certainly won’t be able to catch anything in this weather.”
“Well, let me get my snowshoes and see if I can make it back to the police station.”
When Hamish emerged from the hotel, a couple of tractors with snowploughs attached had cleared the hotel forecourt and even the narrow road outside had already been ploughed and salted. The sky above was steel grey but no snow fell. He trudged down into Lochdubh through the frozen landscape. Everything was still, everything was quiet. No bird sang. Not even a buzzard sailed up to the cold sky. The tops of the twin mountains above Lochdubh were hidden in mist. Fortunately, there was no wind to whip up the snow into another land-blown blizzard.