Jamie introduced her, and then said, “We’ll be in the office, Helen, if you want me.”
His wife smiled vaguely and then swayed off in the direction of the house.
“Now, what can I do for you?” asked Jamie. “Found Sandy?”
“No,” said Hamish. “I was hoping you would have had some news.”
Jamie led the way into the office. “That’s a funny-looking police dog,” he said, looking at Towser.
“Aye,” said Hamish, not wanting to explain that Towser was a pet and not a trained bloodhound. He often felt half-ashamed of his affection for the animal.
“It’s a funny business this,” said Jamie. “The skeleton, I mean. It can’t be Sandy or Mainwaring. No acid, they say. Maybe the flesh was boiled off.”
“The bones were too hard,” said Hamish vaguely. “Let me see that lobster shed again, Jamie. I’d like to see if I can find any clue as to who left the whisky there. I was called out to the Angler’s Rest on Saturday evening and it turned out to be a hoax. It’s all connected. I tried to tell Blair, but he wouldnae listen.”
“That man never listens to anyone,” said Jamie. “Come on, and I’ll show you the shed again.”
Hamish looked down into the centre lobster tank. It was empty and the water was still. “Be getting another load in soon,” said Jamie, “but the weather’s terrible bad.”
Taking out his torch, Hamish switched it on and began to search in the dark corners.
“Look here, Hamish,” said Jamie crossly. “I didn’t like Mainwaring, but if you think I bumped him off and fed him to the lobsters – ”
He broke off. Hamish straightened up and turned and looked at Jamie, his hazel eyes blank.
“Aye, chust so,” he said. And then he continued searching again.
Jamie waited and fidgeted and then burst out with, “I’ve got more to do than stand here on a cold night watching you playing yourself, Hamish. I’m going to join the wife. Shut the shed door after you when you’re finished.”
Hamish grunted. He was down on his hands and knees on the floor, the top of his peaked cap just visible over the concrete edge of the tank.
Jamie snorted with disgust and went off. Hamish crawled around the tank, examining the edges and the floor, inch by inch. Towser kept leaping on him, thinking it was some sort of game, and Hamish kept having to push the dog away.
On the far side of the tank, away from the door, there was a thin crack in the concrete side. In the crack was a limp, damp strand of red wool. Hamish fished in his pockets until he found a pair of tweezers. He carefully extracted the strand of wool and held it up to the light. Then he sat down suddenly on the floor with his back to the tank, his mind racing.
He thought about the skeleton, about the newness of it, about the scratches and scores on the bone. He carefully tucked the strand away in a clean envelope. He got to his feet, noticing as he did so in a detached kind of way that his knees were trembling.
He made his way out and over to Jamie’s house, a long, low bungalow that made up the south side of the square yard, the three sheds with the office alongside one of the sheds making up the other three sides.
He rang the bell. The strains of ‘Loch Lomond’ chimed out into the night. Jamie answered the door. “Just away, are you, Hamish?”
Hamish shook his head sadly. “No, I have to talk to ye.”
“Well, come in, but leave that dog in the kitchen. The wife won’t thank you for muddy paws on her carpets.”
He led the way through the kitchen and into the living-room. Kitchen or back doors are always used in the Highlands. The front door is used only for carrying out the coffin at funerals and for New Year’s Eve parties.
The sitting-room was brilliantly lit by a chandelier on the low ceiling. It had been made for a much bigger room with a much higher ceiling, and Hamish ducked his head under it as he went to sit down on the edge of a white leather sofa. Helen Ross smiled at him vaguely and went back to turning the pages of a copy of Vogue. The carpet was white too, Hamish noticed. Despite his distress, he found himself wondering how old Helen Ross was. With a grown-up son, she was in her late thirties at the least, but she seemed peculiarly ageless.
“Now, what’s the trouble, man?” said Jamie, sitting down on a white leather armchair opposite Hamish.
“Where are all those lobsters that you had at the weekend?” asked Hamish.
Jamie looked surprised. “Let me see…the lads had just packed the trucks and were ready to drive off when I came back on Sunday night. I got the last train, five o’clock from Inverness, which got in about eight-thirty.”
“Didn’t you take the car?”
“No, I don’t like to drive all that way in winter. I left it at Cnothan station.”
“And the lobsters will be sold by now?”
“Sold, cooked, and eaten. They were in the market in Billingsgate first thing this morning.”
“But there’ll be some in the shops?” asked Hamish with a note of desperation in his voice.
“I doubt it. Restaurants, big hotels, even the House of Commons. Maybe Harrods will have some, of course.”
Hamish put his head in his hands and groaned.
Jamie looked at him in silence and then he said slowly, “Are you trying to say that that skeleton was because of my lobsters?”
“It looks like that, Jamie.”
Jamie went white to the lips. “It cannae be. No, I won’t believe it.”
“You know thae lobsters could clean a corpse of flesh and they’d have had the bones too if the skeleton hadn’t been fished out.”
“Hamish,” said Jamie. “This is a matter of life and death.”
Helen Ross gave a delicate yawn and rustled the pages of the magazine.
“It’s a case o’ murder,” said Hamish Macbeth.
“But this could ruin me. It will ruin me,” cried Jamie. “Don’t you see? Those lobsters’ll be eaten by all the top people in London and it’ll be in the papers that Jamie Ross turned them all into cannibals! Hush it up, man. How much?”
“Jamie, you’re no’ dreamin’ o’ bribing me!” exclaimed Hamish.
“Not you in particular. The police. They always want funds for something.”
“It won’t do,” said Hamish mournfully.
Jamie raised his fists. “That bastard, Mainwaring. I don’t think it was murder at all. I think the bastard was poking about and fell in the tank and struck his head or something. Maybe he committed suicide to spite me.”
“We don’t know yet that it was Mainwaring,” said Hamish.
“Who else would cause such trouble?” said Jamie.
Hamish rose to his feet and looked down at Jamie sadly. “I have to ask you to seal off that shed and not to use it until it’s had a thorough going-over.”
“I’m ruined,” whispered Jamie. “Ruined.”
His wife rose to her feet in one elegant fluid movement. She went to a drinks trolley in the corner, poured a stiff whisky, and then handed the glass to her husband. Then she sat down again and picked up a gold cigarette case from a side table.
She took out a cigarette and lit it with a solid-gold lighter. Then she looked at her husband.
“You’ll be as famous as Sweeney Todd,” she said in a soft Highland voice. “Chust think of that!” And then she laughed.
Hamish trudged back into Cnothan with Towser at his heels. He should have used Jamie’s phone and summoned the police immediately. But he wanted to think. He would like to do something to save Jamie’s business. But Jamie might be a murderer. His thoughts went round and round and always came back to focus on Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. He had heard about addicts trying to give up drink or drugs who managed well for a bit and then some piece of worry or distress would set up the old craving again. And so Hamish Macbeth craved Priscilla.