“She told me nothing. I only put that about to try to flush you out. The mileage you must have covered. Up to Grianach, down to London. Why did you put that amateurish bit of wire over the stairs?”
“I thought that with any luck it might work and if it didn’t, it would reinforce the idea that a woman was the culprit, maybe one of the family.”
“Why did you kill Mark Gentle?”
“I had to see him. I couldn’t risk leaving any loose ends. I had to make sure Irena hadn’t confided in him.
“He invited me in when I said I was Harold Jury. He said he’d heard I was staying up in the Highlands when he was there. I asked him if Irena had said anything about me. He began to look suspicious and asked me what was so important about anything that Irena might have said about me. I had to kill him. Well, let’s get on with this.”
In one fluid movement, Hamish threw the contents of the scalding hot coffeepot in Cyril’s face.
He screamed as Hamish wrested the gun from his hand. But he stumbled to his feet and lashed out and kicked Hamish full in the stomach. As Hamish doubled over, he heard the kitchen door slam, and as he clutched his stomach and headed in pursuit, he heard the roar of a car engine.
Outside in the hell of the shrieking gale, Hamish doubled over again and vomited. Cursing, he finally straightened up, jumped into his Land Rover, and headed in pursuit.
He took the humpbacked bridge out of Lochdubh at such speed that he bumped his head on the roof of the vehicle. Great sheets of rain were obscuring his view. The windscreen wipers were barely coping.
Hamish could not see the shine of any taillights ahead. Would he have gone to the hotel?
He talked rapidly into the police radio as he drove. He screeched across the gravel at the hotel forecourt and rushed inside. The night porter swore that no one at all had come in.
Hamish sat down suddenly in a chair in the reception. He was sure Cyril would not take any of the main roads in case of roadblocks.
Then he thought – the castle! Would he hole up there? It was worth a try.
He got back into the Land Rover and hurtled back out into the night.
He was driving fast along a narrow road leading to the castle when a tree crashed down in front of him, blocking the road.
Swearing, he climbed out. Why should the county of Sutherland, usually bereft of trees, choose to throw this one in his path?
He wrestled to try to move it. It was an old ash tree which had seen many years. In the light from his headlamps, he could see the great broken roots and the branches whipping back and forth as if the tree were a live thing in its death throes.
He switched off the lights and the engine and leapt over the tree, setting out on foot. At times he was blown backwards by the sheer force of the gale.
The air was full of shrieking wind, a hellish noise, as if all the devils from hell had been let loose. He reached the entrance to the drive. A small moon raced out from between the ragged black clouds.
The tower was being buffeted by great waves, huge waves, dashing up the side of the cliff and as far as the top of the building. He could dimly make out a light in the tower window and Cyril’s car parked in front. Cyril had gone to earth in Irena’s old room.
As Hamish struggled forward against the wind, he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble.
Some instinct called to him to stop. Some voice in his head was calling “Danger!”
But another voice in his head was calling out, too. “Are you going to let him get away with it?”
He took another step forward.
Arid then even above the noise of the storm, he heard a great rumbling and threw himself flat on his face, his hands clutching at the tussocky grass.
He raised his head and, by the light of the racing moon, watched in horror as the whole castle began to slide into the sea while the clifftop crumbled under the battering of the waves. For a brief second, he saw Cyril silhouetted against the window, and then he was gone – gone down with the castle into the depths of the raging sea.
Now the waves were dashing up, trying to eat away more of the land.
Hamish got shakily to his feet. The air was full of spray. He headed back the way he had come, propelled this time by the wind at his back.
When he reached the Land Rover, he found that the radio wasn’t working, and he could not get a signal on his mobile phone. For the first time, he realised he was soaking wet. He had left the station wearing only a sweater and trousers.
He reversed away from the fallen tree until he could turn around and headed back to Lochdubh.
He reached the shelter of the police station and rushed to phone Jimmy. Jimmy’s voice was faint and crackly, but he said he would be at the police station as soon as possible.
Hamish changed into dry clothes. He took down a bottle of whisky from the kitchen cupboard and put it on the table with two glasses. He checked the stove thoroughly before he lit it in case Cyril had left another bomb in there.
Half an hour later, Jimmy came crashing in.
“Two police cars blown over in the hunt,” he said. “You said something about the bastard having fallen into the sea.”
Hamish told him about the end of the castle. “He was here before that, trying to kill me.” Hamish went on to outline all that had happened while Jimmy opened the whisky bottle and helped himself.
“I thought Blair would have been here organising things,” said Hamish.
“We couldn’t rouse him. His phone was switched off,” said Jimmy. “Well, thank God he’s gone and truly dead. Save the taxpayer a lot of money. No trial. You’d better write down a full statement, Hamish. Before you called, the Met checked on Harold Jury. He’s dead. I wonder where our Cyril got that gun?”
“Do you know,” said Hamish, “that if Cyril had never become so determined to put on that production of Macbeth, we’d never have got him? Or if he hadn’t had such small feet, I might never have guessed it was him.”
“It’s no use phoning air-sea rescue in this storm. Well, I’d better get the men up there anyway and see what I can do. You stay here, Hamish, and get to work on that report.”
When he had left, Hamish went through to the police office and started typing. It took him two hours to write a carefully detailed report. As he typed, he reflected that Mrs. Gentle had made herself look guilty. She had decided not to hire a wedding car because she was regretting the expense and planned to drive Irena in her own car. She stopped the caterers going to the cellar because she thought they might pilfer a few bottles. When he had finished, he sent it off to Strathbane, went through to his bedroom, and fell into bed, fully clothed and down into a dreamless sleep, forgetting for the first time that his pets were not with him.
♦
He woke next morning to the crash of the cat flap. He got out of bed to face the reproachful eyes of two animals. He filled their water bowls and then went to shower, shave, and change into his uniform.
He then loaded his pets into the Land Rover, noticing that the waterfront was covered in pebbles, seaweed, and driftwood, hurtled ashore by the storm. The weather had made another of its mercurial changes. The sun shone down from a clear sky.
Hamish drove up to where the castle had been. Scores of Crime operatives were there in their blue coveralls, hovering uselessly on the cliff’s edge.
Blair was standing there with Jimmy and Andy MacNab. Jimmy hailed him. Blair turned his back as Hamish walked up.
“You can take a look over the edge,” said Jimmy, “but the sea’s still too rough for anyone to go down there. We’ll need to wait until low tide. It’ll take ages to find the body between the ruin of the castle and the fact that the whole of the clifftop went down with it. Come to think of it, to get to the pillock’s body will probably take more money than if there had been a trial.”