“Scotch broth to start,” said Priscilla, “and then steak. We’ve got a new chef. We had to get rid of the old one,” she said to Doris, “after that murder here, the one I told you about.”
Doris gazed at Hamish with admiration. “I heard you’d solved it,” she said. “Tell me all about it.”
Normally too shy to talk much about himself but frightened of Willie’s gaffes, Hamish told her about it at length, but Priscilla saw to her irritation that Doris was entranced with Hamish and could hardly keep her eyes off him.
The evening went from bad to worse. Hamish had never before seen Willie drink anything stronger than tea or coffee. The whisky before dinner, the wine at dinner and the brandy afterwards went straight to his head. As soon as Hamish had finished talking, Willie began to talk about his cases, which sounded like a dismal catalogue of public harassment. He seemed a genius at finding out cars with bald tyres, cars with lapsed road tax, cars with various other faults, and every parking offence under the sun. He told what he obviously thought were hilarious stories of people who had become angry with him and what they had said. He laughed so hard, the tears ran down his face. Willie had never before enjoyed himself so much. He felt he was the life and soul of the party.
Hamish at last propelled a dreamily smiling Willie out to the Land Rover. “You made a fine mess o’ that, Willie,” he said as he drove down to Lochdubh through the heathery darkness. But there was no reply. Willie had fallen asleep.
What on earth am I going to do with him, thought Hamish wearily. Up on the field behind the manse, lights glowed behind the curtained windows of the bus. He did not like the sight. He did not like the feeling of this alien and dangerous presence in Lochdubh.
He then reassured himself with the thought that they would soon get bored and move on. The ‘travellers’ like to journey in convoys. It was odd to find two of them on their own.
He woke Willie outside the police station and ordered him sharply to go in and go to bed. Then he phoned Strathbane. Jimmy Anderson was working overtime and took the call. He had, he said, found nothing on Cheryl and Sean Gourlay from the Glasgow police except to confirm that Sean had taken his driving test in Glasgow recently, hence the new licence.
“Try Scotland Yard,” urged Hamish. “See what they can come up with.”
“Whit? They’re overworked down there as it is,” complained Anderson. “Whit’s this Sean done?”
“Nothing…yet,” said Hamish. “Look, just try them.”
“Try them yoursel’,” said Anderson. “We’ve got more than enough work here. In my opinion, you’re going a bit ower the top about this Sean character. Wait till he does something.”
Hamish put down the receiver. He felt he had been a bit silly. There was no need to phone the Yard.
Besides, what could he have told Scotland Yard anyway? That he had a bad feeling, an intuition?
Sean would be gone by next week at the latest. And with that comforting thought, Hamish went to bed.
∨ Death of a Travelling Man ∧
2
We believe no evil till the evil’s done.
—Jean de la Fontaine
But a week later, the bus was still parked up behind the manse. A much cleaner and quieter Cheryl than Hamish had first met wandered about the village or up on the moors. She and Sean were hardly ever to be seen together. They seemed a popular enough pair with the villagers, who were all Highland enough to admire really genuine laziness when they saw it, and Hamish was irritated to overhear one of the village women saying, “Thon Sean Gourlay can beat our Hamish any day when it comes to the idleness.”
Hamish felt this was particularly unfair, as he had suddenly been beset with a series of small accidents and crimes to deal with. There were frying-pan fires, minor car crashes, lost sheep, lost children, boundary disputes, poachers, and various other things which seemed like dramas at the outset and resolved themselves into minor happenings at the end. Particularly the three reported cases of lost children, who turned out to have been playing truant from school to go fishing. But it still meant a lot of paperwork, and Hamish found that easier to do himself than to spend hours correcting Willie’s prose.
The weather was still unseasonably mild and all the burns and rivers were foaming with peaty water, like beer, as they rushed down from the hills and mountains fed by melting snow. The air was full of the sound of rushing water. Curlews piped on the moors, sailing over their nests, their long curved beaks giving them a prehistoric look. There were vast skies of milky blue and tremendous sunsets of feathery pink clouds, long bands of them, each cloud as delicate as a brush-stroke.
Hamish would have put Sean Gourlay out of his mind had he not found him hanging around the hotel gift shop where Priscilla worked.
Sean gave Hamish his usual mocking look as he strolled out of the shop. Hamish waited until he had gone and then said to Priscilla, “You shouldn’t encourage him.”
“Why not?” demanded Priscilla coolly. “The first time he bought a silver-and-amethyst ring, and the second, a mohair shawl. He’s a genuine customer, Hamish.”
“Where does he get the money?” demanded Hamish. “I happen to know the pair o’ them are drawing the dole from the post office.”
“Maybe he’s got a private income,” said Priscilla. “Look, Hamish, the way you go on and on about layabouts is a joke. You’ve never been a one for hard work yourself.”
“Aye, but I get my money honestly,” said Hamish, annoyed that she should defend Sean.
“Hamish, I happen to know that you poach salmon from the river.”
“Well, only the odd one.”
“Still, that’s stealing. You’re supposed to stop poaching.”
“It’s the gangs that dynamite the rivers I’m after,” said Hamish huffily. “I don’t do any harm.”
“You must have less than ever to do now that you’ve got Willie,” pursued Priscilla.
“On the contrary, I’ve got double the work. That fellow makes work. That was a grand idea of yours to get him married off, but there isnae a woman in Lochdubh that would have him.”
“Seen anything of Doris?” asked Priscilla casually.
“She called at the police station a couple of times, just in a friendly way,” said Hamish defensively.
The phone on the wall rang shrilly and Priscilla picked it up. “It’s for you,” she said, handing the receiver to Hamish.
Mrs Wellington’s voice sounded shrill and harsh from the other end. “Hamish, wee Roderick Fairley is trapped on a rock in the Anstey below the bridge and the river’s rising by the minute. Where were you? Why isn’t there anyone at the police station? Why?”
Hamish dropped the receiver on the counter. “There’s a wee boy stuck on a rock in the Anstey,” he said to Priscilla. “See if you can get Willie.”
As he ran out, he could hear Mrs Wellington’s voice still squawking from the receiver.
He drove fast down to the village. He could see a group of men and women hanging over the parapet of the hump-backed bridge over the River Anstey.
He jumped down from the Land Rover and pushed them aside.
Roderick Fairley, a chubby five-year-old with hair as flaming red as Hamish’s own, was sitting astride a large rock in the middle of the river, which was foaming about him with a deafening roar.
“The river’s rising every minute,” said a man at Hamish’s ear. “We’d throw the wee lad a rope but the force o’ that water’d pull his arms frae their sockets.”
“Get a ladder,” said Hamish. He scrabbled down the side of the bridge and on to the riverbank. The force of the water was tremendous as it cascaded under the bridge and poured around large rocks like the one on which the child was sitting and then hurtled down the falls below. Rainbows rose in the air above the water. Hamish cupped his hands to call to the boy and then realized that Roderick would not be able to hear him above the force of the river.