Without hesitation he jumped into the pool despite his heavy-buckled Ashman boots and waded over to retrieve the timber and the animal. He hoisted the timber and the dog out of the water and waded back. Once he had climbed out, he examined the cord, observing as he did that it had been looped around the dog’s body several times and tied with knots that he was unfamiliar with. They certainly did not seem to be common seamen’s knots, yet they had been competently formed and were intended not to slip.
‘It looks like someone knew what they were doing, my wee friend,’ he said. He pulled out a penknife and sliced the ropes distant from the knots. He had half expected the dog to make a bolt for freedom, but it just lay on the timber and continued to moan. Then it started to shiver.
‘You are too exhausted to move, I think. And you must have been in the water a long time judging by the state of you. I am surprised that you have survived the cold.’ And after reassuringly stroking its coat and trying to get some of the excess water from its fur, he pulled off the navy-blue Arran jumper that was the only concession to a uniform that he made and wrapped the dog in it. Stuffing the ropes into his pocket he carried it and the timber back up the beach. Then he tossed the timber above the high water-line and picked up his pipes.
‘A good thing I have two panniers on the Bullet,’ he told the shivering creature a few moments later as he stowed first the dog into one, then his pipes into the other carrier. He pulled on his gauntlets, wrapped his McKinnon tartan scarf about his neck and pulled on his Cromwell helmet. He grinned at the steadily rising sun.
‘And a good thing that you are there to warm us up, master sun, otherwise I would not relish riding to Kylshiffin in my T-shirt.’ Then, nodding at the dog, ‘We’ll have a better look at you back at the station, my wee friend. I would like to know who your owner is and why he or she tried to murder you.’
He kicked the Bullet into action and moments later he opened up the throttle and was accelerating along the snaking headland road past Loch Hynish on his way to Kyleshiffin.
He had been cross about Superintendent Lumsden, but attempted murder in any form, even of a dog, made his blood boil.
Ordinarily the Padre, as Torquil’s uncle, the Reverend Lachlan McKinnon, was known by most folk, was careful about the times he played golf in the summer. While the early hours after dawn were a good time to play in the autumn and the spring, he tended to tee-off later in the day during the summer months. But when one had a guest priest in the parish it was another matter. One had to be hospitable and play nine holes when they wanted to. When the guest played off a suspiciously high handicap and was well known for liking a bet on a game there was even more reason to be accommodating. Lachlan was a canny player himself and he hoped that his local knowledge of the course would come in useful.
So far the match was all square. They had teed off at 6 and played seven holes before 7.15.
‘Sure, it is a real golfing paradise that you have here on West Uist, Lachlan,’ said the Reverend Kenneth Canfield, the chaplain to the University of the Highlands as he lined up a six foot putt then gently stroked the ball into the hole. ‘Par four,’ he said with glee, nimbly bending and collecting his ball.
He was a slim, wiry man in his late forties, a former Scottish Universities squash champion. He had a good eye for a ball, but had only been playing golf for about five years. Lachlan thought that his middle handicap belied his ability and suspected that he ‘protected it’ at his home club. The collection of trophies that he had seen in his study when he had last visited him in Inverness seemed to support that.
‘Aye, it may not be St Andrews, but it is a fair test of golf, Kenneth.’ He lined up his own putt and similarly tapped the ball in. ‘And a par for me too. Still all square. Now for the long eighth. I warn you, it is a wee tester.’
Lachlan was proud of the ten-acre plot of undulating dunes and machair that he and several other local worthies had years before transformed into the St Ninian’s Golf Course. Using the natural lie of the land they had constructed six holes, each with at least two potential hazards. The fairways were tractor-mown once a week, the greens were sheep-grazed to near billiard table smoothness and the bunkers (in the beginning at least) had been excavated by generations of rabbits. Each hole had three separate tee positions, each one giving its route to the hole a special name in both English and Gaelic, thereby allowing players the choice of playing a conventional eighteen holes or any combination they chose.
The Padre had tended his flock for more years than he cared to think about. He was now sixty-four years of age and especially proud of the fact that he played off a golf handicap exactly one eighth of his age, having been a single figure handicapper all of his adult life.
He was a tall man, with a mop of shaggy white hair that seemed to defy the application of brush or comb, who sported a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. He was dressed in his usual attire which he wore both on and off the golf course; a green West Uist tweed jacket, corduroy trousers, black shirt and a dog-collar.
They crossed from the green to the eighth tee. A stone marker had a plaque, proclaiming that the hole was called Carragh, the Pillar, because of an ancient standing stone that rose out of the rough on the left of the fairway.
‘You will see that the hole plays entirely differently from this tee, Kenneth,’ Lachlan volunteered as he shoved a tee peg in the ground and pulled out his trusty two wood. ‘You will need to keep to the fairway if you want to make sure that you avoid the Pillar.’
He addressed the ball then swung freely and effortlessly. There was a satisfying click of wood on ball then he held his follow-through and watched the ball start out right then slowly draw back towards the middle of the fairway. It bounced then ran on for another forty yards, rolling just beyond the Pillar.
‘I don’t know how you manage to hit the ball so far and so accurately with those old wooden-headed clubs of yours,’ Kenneth said, with an admiring shake of the head. ‘Good drive!’
‘Thank you, Kenneth,’ Lachlan replied. ‘The truth is that I have never fancied those newfangled metal woods. It sounds like you are hitting the ball with a tin can.’
The Reverend Canfield teed up his ball. ‘But at least they are quite forgiving. They have a bigger sweet spot and I think they make a difference in length.’ He pulled out his huge-headed driver. ‘In fact, I am going to ignore your advice and try the tiger line. If I can cut off a bit of the dog-leg I could maybe get my trusty eight iron to the green with my second shot. Then with the stroke you are giving me on the hole….’
He winked meaningfully then addressed his ball. He swung fast and hard, fairly relishing the noise that Lachlan so scorned. The ball shot off in the direction of the Pillar, easily clearing it to land in the short rough near a thicket of yellow blossomed gorse bushes on the left of the fairway, a good thirty yards further on than Lachlan’s ball.
‘Excellent shot,’ Lachlan enthused. ‘Fortune favours the brave. You should have an easy shot to the green with your second. Just watch your footing because it tends to be pretty damp over there.’
He pulled out a battered old briar pipe from his breast pocket and started stuffing its bowl with tobacco from a dilapidated yellow oilskin pouch. He struck a light and grinned with amusement as he watched the Reverend Canfield striding after his ball.
You are going to need a bit of good fortune, he mischievously thought to himself. We’ll see if you are as fast as you used to be on the squash court.