As he drove off, he could feel the weight of those terrible false teeth dragging at his pocket. He stopped at a bend in the road and hurled the things out of the window, as far away into the gorse and heather as he could manage.
Then he drove to his home, which was a tumbledown cottage outside Cnothan. He took the bag of clothes round the back of his cottage and dumped it down. He siphoned some petrol out of his Land Rover and poured it over bag and set fire to it. He raked the blaze, turning it over and over, until he was sure all the clothes had been red to ash. Then he raked up the ashes and put them in a bag.
He went into his cottage and made himself a cup of sweet tea. He took out the watch and pen and laid them the table. He remembered seeing that pen before.
He longed for a drink so much that his whole body and his hands trembled. But he had not finished yet. He remembered the haunting of the Mainwarings and the storied about witchcraft that had buzzed around the town. He drove off again, up out onto the moors. Up against the failing light of the winter sky stood a ring of standing stones, a miniature Stonehenge.
He drove off the road and over the moor towards it, the Land Rover lurching and bumping over the springy turf. He carried the skeleton in his arms into the middle of the standing stones. A ray of setting sun burst through the clouds and shone onto a raised piece of turf in the centre. Sandy gently laid the skeleton down.
It was then he realized that the skull was nearly coming away from the body of the skeleton. He examined it with delicate probing fingers and then let out his breath in a long hiss.
This had been no accident. This was murder.
“If I report this now,” said Sandy aloud, “they will probably be after me for the murder. If I keep my mouth shut, there’ll be money in it for me.”
The sun disappeared and the wind began to howl, tugging at his clothes, as if the spirits of the dead had risen from the moors and were trying to hold him back.
He gave a whimper of fright and began to run.
♦
That evening, Hamish Macbeth saw the light in Jenny’s cottage. He was longing for a sympathetic ear. He had gone all the way to the Angler’s Rest to find the report of and assault on one of the customers had been false. “Probably some of the locals playing a joke on you,” the manager had said.
Hamish had stayed to talk, and by the time he had returned to Cnothan, The Clachan was closed. The next day, he had put off trying to see Jenny, but a morning listening to Mr. Struthers’ sermon and an afternoon interviewing secretive locals about the frightening of Mrs. Mainwaring had irritated him immensely.
He saw Jenny moving about and went and knocked on the door. At last she opened it. “Come in,” she said. Hamish followed her through to her kitchen. “Will you have a drink?” she asked, turning around.
“What on earth has happened to you, lassie!” cried Hamish, for Jenny’s eyes were red with weeping and her face was bloated.
She averted her face. “I had news of my sister’s death,” she said. “In Canada.”
“I never heard a thing about it,” said Hamish, his mind racing. Relatives, however far away, always phoned the local police station.
“I had a letter,” said Jenny drearily. “It came yesterday.”
“I am verra sorry,” said Hamish awkwardly. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just talk to me.”
“I think it’s yourself that needs to do the talking,” said Hamish.
Jenny gave a weak smile. “I’m being silly,” she said. “I never liked my sister. We’re not very much alike. It was the shock, that’s all.”
“And will you be going to Canada for the funeral?”
“No point.” Jenny shrugged. “We’re not a close family.”
“What did she die of?”
“Look, Hamish Macbeth, it’s over and done with. I don’t want to talk about it. Now, have a drink and tell me about your witch-hunt.”
She produced a bottle of Barsac, a sweet dessert wine from the fridge, opened it, and poured it into two water glasses.
“Do you often drink this stuff?” asked Hamish, wrinkling his nose.
“What’s up with it? It’s a drink, isn’t it? I forget when I bought it. Oh, I remember. It was last year. It was for some recipe. It’s been in the fridge ever since.”
A fat tear rolled down her cheek and splashed into be glass.
Hamish decided to do what he’d been told and chattered on nervously about the fake assault, about how Diarmuk Sinclair was slowly coming out of his shell, about the difficulty of getting any information at all out of the locals.
She drank and listened and seemed soothed. Hamish finally felt he could not talk any longer. He got to his feet. “I’ll be off to my bed, Jenny,” he said. “Maybe I’ll drop by tomorrow, if it is all right with you.”
“Sure. I’ll be here.” She came round the kitchen table and stood in front of him, her head bent. “You don’t need to go,” she said.
“Whit?”
“Stay the night…with me,” said Jenny.
Hamish bent and kissed her cheek. “It wouldna’ work,” he said softly. “Not when you’re this miserable. I’d be someone tae cling to the night, and someone to hate in the morning.”
Jenny remained standing, her head still bent.
Hamish turned and walked away and let himself out in the night.
♦
Hamish’s first visitor early next morning was Jamie Ross. “I don’t know whether I’m doin’ the right thing or not,” said Jamie. “I got back last night and found everything in order, but no sign of Sandy. I went out to his place, but there was no one home.”
“Maybe he’s indoors, dead drunk, and cannae hear you,” said Hamish.
“No, the door wasn’t locked. I took a look inside. He’s gone all right, but his Land Rover’s still there. I’m wondering whether to report him missing.”
“It’s early days,” said Hamish. “Had he been drinking?”
“Well, that’s what worries me. He had. Worse than that, he told Hector at The Clachan that I had kindly left a glass of booze for him on one of the tanks. I wouldn’t dream of doing a thing like that. Hector said he was drinking himself silly. I got mad and asked why no one had stopped him. But far from stopping him, the locals seem to have gone out of their way to buy him drinks.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Jealousy,” said Jamie simply. “You know what they’re like around here. They don’t like me showing I have any money at all. You’re supposed to be like the crofters and plead poverty. That’s why a lot of these crofters don’t buy their land, you know. They could force the landowner to sell it to them for a song, but then that’d mean they’d need to pass a means test in order to get the government grants, and not one of them could pass it. Sandy’s a good soul when he’s not drinking. I’d hate to see him have an accident. It would be just like him to wander off and fall asleep somewhere and die of exposure. Besides, I owed him the second half of his wages and it’s strange he didn’t turn up to collect. He went away and left the office locked up and took the key with him. I had to break in.”
“I’ll have a look around,” said Hamish. “So you think someone deliberately left that drink so as Sandy would go on drinking, once started?”