Across the landing was a larger room which had been divided up to form a kitchenette and a shower. The toilet was next door to that, and along from it was the archive room where all the past issues of the Chronicle were kept. On the landing there was room for a battered old settee and a camp-bed, which Calum used when he was either working late, or when he felt too inebriated to return home.
By the time the lads had arrived to take their piles of papers away that morning, Calum had consumed three bottles of Heather Ale and the better part of a half-bottle of Glen Corlin malt whisky. As a result he had paid the lads twice the usual amount and wished them a fond farewell before tumbling into the camp-bed intent upon sleeping until at least tea time.
He was only dimly aware of the downstairs bell ringing, a female voice calling out, then the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
‘Mr Steele, I’m here! Where would you like me to start?’
Calum shoved the cushion away from his face and propped himself up on an elbow and felt about on the floor for his wire-framed spectacles, without which he could barely see the end of his nose.
‘What the…? Who the blazes are you?’
He blinked several times and forced his bleary eyes to focus. As he did so he found himself looking at a pretty young woman in her early twenties with short crinkly hair and with large hoop ear-rings. She was dressed in jeans with fashionable holes in the knees, pink trainers and a T-shirt with the logo ‘The West Uist Chronicle WRITES!’
‘It’s me, Cora Melville.’
‘Cora? Melville?’ A dim and worrying recollection was itching at the back of his mind.
Cora giggled. ‘Of course, silly. You remember! My great-aunty introduced us at the celeidh at New Year. I was just getting ready to do my last term in journalism at Abertay University and you and Great-aunt Bella arranged—’
‘Bella Melville is your great-aunt?’ Calum interrupted. He swallowed hard, for Miss Bella Melville had taught him and most of his friends on the island. All of them were still in awe of her.
Cora nodded enthusiastically. ‘And so here I am, your new reporter ready to start my new job.’ She giggled again. An effervescent laugh that made him think of fizzy lemonade. ‘So, where shall I start? I am so excited that you are going to teach me all about journalism.’
Calum’s head began to throb. Now he remembered only too well. In a near drunken fit of magnanimity he had promised Miss Melville that he would employ Cora at the West Uist Chronicle.
‘Ah, yes. I’m a wee bit tired just now, Cora. I need a bit of sleep. Why don’t you – er – have a look round – quietly get to know the place.’
For a moment she looked a bit crestfallen. But it was only for a moment. She snapped her fingers. ‘I know. A good reporter needs to know the style of the paper back to front. Is it all right if I look through your archives?’
Calum smiled. ‘Aye, excellent idea. The archives are in the room back there. Help yourself. Read and digest. But quietly.’ He yawned and screwed up his eyes to look at his watch. ‘Give me a couple of hours then maybe you could make a cup of coffee. Strong black coffee.’
Cora smiled and clicked her heels, then saluted. ‘Will do, sir. That will get you perky again. And it will give me time to familiarize myself with the past Chronicle stories.’
‘That’s the way, lassie. Just do it quietly, eh? I like your attitude. Good approach. A good journalist needs to be ever on the alert. Vigilance at all times.’
Cora giggled and skipped across the landing. ‘Vigilance at all times, I like it. I’ll make it my motto.’
‘Aye, you do that,’ Calum groaned as he slumped back on the camp-bed. He pulled the cushion over his face again. ‘Vigilance at all….’
Within moments he was snoring gently away.
TWO
Sergeant Morag Driscoll was striding passed the multi-coloured shop fronts of Harbour Street like a woman on a mission. She smiled at several of the merchants and traders as they set up their market-stalls along the sea wall in readiness for the inevitable market-day crowds. The harbour itself was crammed with a flotilla of yachts, fishing boats and motorboats, all bobbing up and down in the early morning sun. She had been off duty for a week and had recharged her batteries sufficiently to feel keen to get to the station to see how PC Ewan McPhee had managed in her absence. Under her arm she had a bag full of freshly baked butter rolls from Allardyce, the bakers and was looking forward to having one with a cup of Ewan’s famous strong tea. It would be good to have five minutes to catch up before the locals started dropping in to lodge complaints, enquire about lost dogs, cats, budgies, or just to pass the time of day with whichever of the three regular members or the two special constables of the West Uist division of the Hebridean Constabulary was behind the desk.
A pretty, thirty-something, single mother of three, Morag fought a constant battle with herself. She was attractive by any standards, although she herself believed that she had a weight problem. It worried her and she worked hard to keep as trim as possible, since her husband had died unexpectedly from a heart attack when she was just twenty-six and she vowed that she would always be there for her children. On duty days her morning butter roll at the station was usually her first bite of the day, since she rarely had time to eat breakfast as she bustled about getting her kids up, fed and off to school. Although she felt guilty about the butter and what it might do to her cholesterol, one couldn’t live without a little luxury now and then.
She stopped to look in the window of Staig’s, the newsagents, as she walked, and thought that her reflection did not look too bad today. She was dressed in the blue Arran jumper with three small stripes on her arm to denote her rank, jeans and trainers. She turned slightly to the side and smiled as the side view confirmed her impression that she looked pretty trim. Slim enough to risk two butter rolls, maybe.
She scanned the posters in the window and the advertising cards sellotaped to the inside and noted the headlines on the framed West Uist Chronicle billboard in the entrance. She nodded to herself, pleased to see that nothing dire seemed to have happened while she was off.
‘I’ll have a Chronicle please, Willie,’ she said as she entered the shop and handed over her loose change.
‘Are you going to the Flotsam & Jetsam show this evening, Sergeant Driscoll?’ asked Willie Staig, the bucolic-nosed newsagent. ‘Should be good. The midge man is going to be on it.’
‘Doctor Dent, the entomologist? What would he be doing on an antique show?’
‘Bit of local colour, I am thinking. Since the news went out that they would be shooting the show here for the next fortnight the holidaymakers have come flooding in.’ He grinned. ‘And as they have come so it seems that the midges have brought their friends with them.’ He leaned forward lest other customers should hear him. ‘I have done a roaring trade in anti-midge creams and repellents. And as you and I know, none of them do very much at all.’