At first, everyone talked in low murmurs, discreedy piling plates with food and taking them off to one of the tables that had been set up around the hall.
Gloria accosted Hamish. “I’m glad you came,” she said. She had removed her hat.
“Did anyone warn you this is likely to go on all night?” asked Hamish.
“Why?”
“It’s a highland funeral. In some of the outer isles, it can still go on all week.”
“They all seem subdued.”
“Give them time.”
After an hour, the whisky began to flow and the voices got louder. After another two hours, the floor was cleared and the local band of accordion, drums, and fiddle started playing highland reels.
Hamish had drunk nothing but water, but his head began to ache. There was no sign of Betty, Jock, Dora, or Caro. Poor Effie, thought Hamish. No grand send-off for her. Effie had been cremated quietly and quickly in Strathbane.
He went back to the police station and took two aspirin. He was suddenly exhausted again and felt like crying. If only life were like television, he thought crossly, where the hero is tied up and beaten to a pulp, escapes his captors, and manages to still engage in a brutal fist-fight. He sighed. Bruce Willis I am not.
He took his notes to bed with him, searching, always searching, for a clue he felt sure was in there. He fell into a deep sleep, the notes scattered about him in the bed.
He dreamt that Elspeth was calling him from the other side of the loch. He knew he had to reach her. He waded into the loch and found it was shallow. He continued wading towards her on the other side, and then his foot slipped and he plunged down into the depths of the loch. He tried to rise to the surface, but something caught him by the ankle and held him down.
He awoke with a start. Elspeth. She had done an awful thing to him and had been punished. But he suddenly wished it had never happened. He remembered the cheque from the newspaper. He had forgotten all about it. He got out of bed and searched in the pockets of the trousers he had worn to Glasgow. The cheque was still there. He laid it out on the bedside table to remind him to put it in the bank in the morning.
He thought again about Betty. What did she really think of him? It would be pleasant to be married to someone easy and kind.
Why had Priscilla gone off so coldly, particularly when she knew he was ill?
♦
Hamish rose early in the morning and went for a walk along the waterfront. He liked rising early in the summer to enjoy the light. The winters were so long and dark and one hardly ever saw the sun.
The loch was like a mirror. He went along to the harbour where the fishing boats were coming back in. They were now allowed to fish only three days a week. The fishermen were furious because they said European countries did not have to obey such stringent laws. Lochdubh had been a fishing village since the days of the Highland Clearances in the early nineteenth century. Crofters driven off by landowners who wanted the land for sheep were sometimes forced over to the coast, where they were told they could make a living from seaweed gathering and fish. Lochdubh had been luckier than most other places because the Countess of Sutherland had built a summer home there – now a deserted hotel by the harbour. She arranged for a whole village to be built out of rows of stone whitewashed houses, the houses that still stood there today.
Hamish hailed Archie Macleod. “Good catch?”
“Fair to middling. I’ll give ye a wee fish for Sonsie. I’ll drop it by the kitchen door.”
“Thanks, Archie.”
“Lucky we got anything. So many seals around.”
Hamish knew that no fisherman in Lochdubh would ever contemplate killing a seal because they believed that seals were human beings who had come back.
He sat down on the harbour wall, warm from the sun. Seals. One of the boys had said something about a seal.
He stiffened. What if Hal had been standing looking up at the waterfront, waiting for someone, but that someone had crept up out of the loch?
He stood up and looked along the waterfront, and then he saw Betty.
He had only seen her wearing trouser suits before, but she was now wearing a pair of shorts. Her legs were very long and surprisingly thin. Must be why she always wears trousers, thought Hamish.
She was standing on a flat stone by the water’s edge, her hands behind her back, peering down into the water.
Hamish was suddenly reminded of the heron he had seen with Robin. There was something predatory in Betty’s stance, and those long thin legs reminded him of the heron’s legs.
For some reason he could not explain to himself at the time, he moved quickly back from the harbour wall so that she would not see him.
He went back to the police station to look for Harry Wilson’s number. He found he was very cold again and put it down to the after-effects of the concussion.
∨ Death of a Dreamer ∧
12
From the mountains, moors, and fenlands,
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Harry,” said Hamish, “can I come over and see you? I need your help with something.”
“Tell you what, Hamish. I feel like a bit of a drive. I’ll nip over and see you. Give me about half an hour or so.”
“Have you got any photos of your diving school, that one you went to?”
“I’ve got some in the family photo album. I’ll bring the lot.”
After Hamish had rung off, Dr. Brodie came by. He shone lights in Hamish’s eyes and checked the lump on his head. “I think you’ll do,” he said. “How are you feeling otherwise? Not too emotional?”
“I cry a bit.”
“That happens. Any weakness in the legs?”
“No, they’re all right.”
“Headaches?”
“I had one at the funeral celebrations.”
“You weren’t drinking too much?”
“Wasn’t drinking at all.”
“Good, because Lochdubh is one great hangover, and I’m plagued with the usuaclass="underline" “But, Doctor, I only had two drinks. It must be something I ate.” Take care of yourself. I saw your boss, Mr. Daviot, and told him firmly you needed peace and quiet.”
When he left, Hamish waited impatiently for Harry’s arrival. Harry had said he would arrive in half an hour or so, which by the highland clock could mean as much as two hours. As they say in the Highlands, ‘mañana’ is too urgent a word.
♦
An hour and a half later, Harry arrived. “Sorry, Hamish,” he said. “Sheep on the road.”
Sheep on the road was another of those highland lies, like ‘I’ve just had two drinks’, ‘I’ve a bad back’ and ‘I’ll fix it for you right away’.
“I’ve got the coffee on,” said Hamish. “Did you bring the photos?”
“Yes, but why do you want to see them ”
“It’s this idea I have that the murderer of the American could have come out of the loch. Jock Fleming, the artist, is from Glasgow. So is his wife. Maybe one of them took a diving course at one time.”
“Here you are.” Harry fished a large photo album out of a duffel bag and put it on the table.
“The ones of the diving school are at the back.”
Hamish opened the leather-bound album to the back. There were a lot of photos of scuba divers going into the sea and coming up out of the sea. But he found one of a Christmas party. He eagerly studied the faces, but there was not one single one he recognised.