His question had the desired effect, albeit not immediately. A head popped up from the heather. Then another rose beside it. Then two figures climbed to their feet as he jogged up to them.
‘What the heck do you think you are doing?’ demanded one of the men.
Ewan jogged to a stop in front of them. They were both wearing bobble hats, camouflage gear and green Wellington boots. He did not like the sullen look of the man who had just spoken. He was a swarthy, stocky man of about thirty with a gold ear-ring in one ear.
‘West Uist Police,’ Ewan said. ‘PC McPhee here.’
Both men seemed to stiffen slightly. Then they glanced shiftily at each other.
‘Police? What’s the problem, Officer?’ said the other man, a lean, unshaven fellow in his mid-twenties. ‘We’re just bird-watching.’
His companion was not so affable. ‘And do you realize that you’ve probably trodden on that nest. You’ve probably killed all three of those red-crested moorhammer chicks.’
‘I don’t think I trod on any nest,’ Ewan replied, maintaining his natural friendliness. ‘But as I asked, have either of you seen a hammer near here? A highland throwing hammer.’
The lean man smiled and reached down into the heather. ‘You must mean this. I thought it was an old cannon ball tied to a post.’
‘That’s my hammer, right enough,’ Ewan said taking it gratefully. ‘It’s a beauty and I wouldn’t like to be without it. I’ll let you get on with your bird-watching then.’ He turned to go then turned back. ‘Are you the owners of a yellow camper-van parked down the road?’
‘We are. We are here for the wildlife, and it is full of all our cameras and telescopes. There’s nothing wrong is there? I thought it was OK to park there,’ the lean one said.
Ewan shook his head. ‘It’s OK parked there, but the off side rear tyre is getting a bit bare. You should see to that straight away. It is illegal as it is.’
‘We’ll deal with it straight away,’ the surly, stocky chap assured him.
Ewan nodded then left, taking a slightly circuitous route to avoid the line of the nest. But, as he headed down the track, he started wondering. He was not entirely sure that they had been watching the moor itself. From where they were, they could have been watching something or someone down in Kyleshiffin.
And he was not sure that he had ever heard of a red-crested moorhammer.
THREE
Calum had dashed up the stairs of the Chronicle offices upon finding that the front door had been forced open in their absence.
‘The beggars!’ he cried, as Cora darted up and joined him on the landing.
In every direction it was chaos. Piles of old newspapers had been cast everywhere. The camp-bed had been tipped over and the desk had been swept of everything except the heavy old Remington typewriter.
‘Who would do something like this?’ Cora asked.
‘The same folk who sent us on that wild goose chase to Largo Head,’ Calum replied sourly. ‘They dragged us away so that they could give the place the once over.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and gingerly pulled open the top drawer of a large grey filing cabinet. He grunted as he saw that his Glen Corlan whisky was still there, as was his old sporran in which he kept the petty cash. He stood looking round then shook his head. ‘No, nothing has been taken. It was just a bit of wanton damage.’
Cora patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Calum,’ she said in as cheery a voice as she could muster up. ‘I’ll have it ship-shape in no time.’ With which she bent down to start gathering the discarded newspapers.
But Calum grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. ‘Touch nothing, Cora!’ he ordered. ‘Whoever did this meant it as a serious message, believe me.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘When you’ve been a newsman as long as me you get an instinct for these things. We’ll need to get the police round. I’ll give my old mate Torquil McKinnon a bell in a minute.’
He reached into a voluminous pocket of his anorak and produced a small digital camera. ‘But before I do, I’ll just take a few pictures of the crime scene.’
‘For the police?’ Cora asked.
Calum shook his head. ‘No lass. For the Chronicle. I’ll write a piece straight away and it’ll go in the next edition. Always remember that the pen is mightier than the sword.’
Cora nodded appreciatively. ‘You are so right, Calum. You can humiliate them in print.’
The little newspaper editor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe, but I bet they’ll just have a good laugh.’ He shook his head and his jaw muscles tightened. ‘Perhaps I didn’t mean that exactly, about the pen being mightier than the sword. It would be more satisfying to shove a pen up their noses when I get hold of them.’
Alec Anderson drove his mobile shop-cum-Royal Mail van into the parking bay at the front of his shop at the end of Harbour Street. Like the van, the shop-front was painted cream and blue with a Royal Mail red canopy shading and sheltering the crates of fruit and vegetables, and the assortment of fishing rods, nets, beach balls, whirly-windmills and umbrellas that proclaimed that Anderson’s Emporium sold most of the things you would need on a West Uist holiday. To emphasize that, on one side of the door was a man-size figure of a kilted highlander licking an ice cream. This last accoutrement had been in the Anderson family’s possession, as had the shop, for three generations, although in recent years Alec had replaced the pipe the highlander had smoked for fifty years with a facsimile of the large ice creams that his emporium was famous for.
At his signature tune peep on the horn – a snatch of a hornpipe – a pretty auburn-haired woman popped out.
‘Hello, my wee darling Agnes,’ he called, jumping out of the van and hauling his mail bag after him.
‘Welcome home, love-bug,’ she replied, skipping to meet him and planting a big kiss on his cheek.
An elderly lady dressed in a cheesecloth dress with an ill-fitting panama hat, with a prodigiously large shoulder bag was just tying the leads of five dogs to a large ring in the wall. ‘Oh heavens! Don’t look, Zimba, Sheila and you young ones,’ she said, good-humouredly addressing a disdainful German shepherd, a zestful West Highland terrier and three boisterous collies. ‘The Andersons’ behaviour is enough to put me off my food, let alone you lot! Now, just you all keep your wheesht while I do my purchasing.’
She straightened and swung her shoulder bag into a more comfortable position, then she shook her head at the grinning couple who stood arm in arm regarding her with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment.
‘Och, we are sorry to offend you, Mrs McConville. ‘I haven’t seen Alec for a few hours and I just miss him when he isn’t here.’
‘As I do you, Agnes, my love.’
Annie McConville glanced heavenwards. ‘It is twenty years since I was widowed, but I cannot remember the lovey-dovey stuff lasting more than a few months, not how ever many years you two have been together. It isn’t natural, I am thinking.’
‘Seven years,’ Alec sighed. ‘And it is perfectly natural, Annie, I assure you. Natural for us at any rate. And we don’t mind showing our feelings.’
Annie gave a shudder then led the way into the shop. ‘Well, let me bring you down from your cloud and do business.’ She pointed to the shelf of pet food. ‘I will be needing three times my usual order of Shepherd’s Best for my hungry crowd. I have a dozen more at the moment and the number seems to be going up. It is criminal the way folk just abandon these poor creatures.’