Death of a Green-Eyed Monster Page 2

  “I’m afraid I haven’t had much of a chance to do any housework since I lost Freddy.” Hamish liked to keep things tidy, but the kitchen was not as clean as it might have been. He fanned a copy of last week’s Sunday Post over one of his kitchen chairs to scatter a little dust and a few crumbs. “Freddy . . . Constable Ross, that is . . . is now the chef at the Tommel Castle Hotel.”

  “A chef?” said Dorothy, accepting the seat offered by Hamish. “It must have been nice having someone here to cook for you.”

  “Aye, we ate well, no doubt about it.” Hamish filled the kettle, placing it on the stove. “Are you much of a cook yourself?”

  “I can rustle up a few things, but cooking surely isn’t part of my duties, is it, Sergeant?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant at all—and by all means call me Hamish when it’s just the two of us. We can share all of that kind of domestic stuff. There’s not much room around here, though, so you might find it a bit cramped at first.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I will—”

  “Sergeant Macbeth!” There was no mistaking the booming voice of Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife, which thundered through the open kitchen door just before she did so herself. A large woman, clad, as always, in the kind of coarse tweed that looked more like carpet backing than country clothing, Mrs. Wellington glowered at Dorothy. “Who is this?”

  “Constable McIver,” Hamish explained, “my new assistant.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Wellington exchanged a firm handshake with Dorothy, then turned straight back to Hamish. “We had someone skulking around in the churchyard again last night. After the lead off the church roof, no doubt. I hear they get a fine price for it from the scrap-metal men nowadays.”

  “Had you called me straight away,” said Hamish, “I might have been able to catch them.”

  “I doubt it. You were nowhere to be found. Perhaps now, however,” she said, looking at Dorothy, “female company might tempt you to spend more time here at your police station.”

  “Oh, I won’t be living here,” said Dorothy. “Headquarters didn’t think that would be appropriate, so they have arranged for me to stay at Mrs. Mackenzie’s boardinghouse until I can make other arrangements.”

  “That’s entirely as it should be.” Mrs. Wellington took note of Hamish’s crestfallen expression. “Now, what about these thieves, Macbeth?”

  “How much did they strip from the roof?”

  “Nothing. I chased them off into the dark and heard them drive away in a van.”

  “It’ll be those scunners up from Strathbane again. I’ll have a word with the local police. They’ll make sure the lead burglars know we’re watching for them.”

  “Please do. Good day, Miss McIver.”

  Mrs. Wellington departed in a rustle of tweed, and Hamish turned to Dorothy.

  “So you’re staying at the Mackenzie place?”

  “Yes, temporarily. Is it all right there?”

  “Aye, it’s fine. She doesn’t have what you might call ‘top-class clientele’—mainly forestry workers and the like—but it should do you until we can sort something else out for you.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll get back there now and finish getting my things out of my car, if that’s okay?”

  “Aye, yes, of course, and . . . well, would you be needing any help with that?”

  “No, I can manage, thanks.”

  As she left, she flashed him another smile, and, had Hamish been a hopeless romantic, his heart would have melted. But part of him was, and part of it did.

  By the time Mrs. Wellington had marched back to the manse, she had passed the time of day with Mrs. Maclean, the wife of Archie, a local fisherman; Mrs. Brodie, wife of the village doctor; and Mrs. Patel, who ran the village store with her husband. That was more than enough to ensure that by the time she had boiled the kettle and sat down with a cup of tea and a copy of Life and Work, the Church of Scotland magazine, everyone in the entire area surrounding Lochdubh knew that Hamish Macbeth’s new constable was but a slip of a girl who looked more like she should be playing a police officer in a TV soap than actually catching real criminals. And how was he supposed to maintain law and order throughout Sutherland with such a distraction filling his every thought day and night? He was only human, after all, only a man, and she such a temptress. So it was that Dorothy McIver became branded a “scarlet woman” before most people in Lochdubh had ever even clapped eyes on her.

  The following morning, Dorothy reported to the police station bright and early to find Hamish standing by the open front door, sipping coffee from a mug, Lugs and Sonsie at his feet. Hamish had spotted her long before she reached the station. She looked every bit as lovely as he remembered, and he had spent most of the night thinking of her—her blue eyes, her smile, her every graceful movement—until he reached the point when he was beginning to believe that he had imagined her.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I see you’ve managed to unstick the front door.” Lugs bounded up to her and she stooped to ruffle his ears. Sonsie simply glowered at her.

  “Aye, it just needed a wee bit of encouragement.” Hamish had spent hours trimming the bottom of the door, rehanging it and giving it a fresh coat of blue paint. He ran his free hand through his fiery red hair, noticed the dried paint stains on his fingers, and shoved the hand in his pocket. “Will you be wanting some breakfast?”

  “I’ve already eaten, thanks, but a coffee would be nice.”

  “Come away in, then,” said Hamish. He turned and stepped into the small hallway, closing the door to the office. He hadn’t yet had time to spruce that up, but the kitchen was now an immaculately clean, cosy haven. He was fairly sure Dorothy approved, although neither mentioned the transformation. Over coffee he explained a little about Lochdubh and the vast area of Sutherland that was their “patch,” then they took a walk through the village, along the seawall. The sun, despite having lost the heat of high summer, broke through the high white clouds, warming the mountainsides around the loch. The tide was out, exposing the widest expanse of beach, patrolled by a scattering of white gulls. Lugs and Sonsie dashed among them and the gulls took to the air, screeching in protest.

  To the side of the Patels’ shop, they came across Mrs. Patel, pacing back and forth beside a small van, wringing her hands with worry.

  “Is there a problem, Mrs. Patel?” Hamish asked.

  “Can you help, Hamish? I’ve been such a dunderheid—locked myself out of the van,” she said in a hushed voice. “The engine’s running and the keys are inside. All that petrol being wasted. I dare not tell my husband I’ve been so stupid. He’s working in the shop.”

  “Have you not a spare set?”

  “Aye, of course. They’re in my handbag—on the passenger seat.”

  “I have a tool in my Land Rover that we can maybe force down through the top of the door and pop the lock.”

  “Will it cause any damage?”

  “No more than a wee scratch at most.”

  “But he’ll go daft if we scratch his precious van!”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t. He’s not some kind of monster,” said Hamish, looking over the van, which, to him, seemed as scraped and scuffed as a comfortable pair of old shoes. “Are you that sure he’d even notice?”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Patel,” said Dorothy. “This should do the trick.” She pulled a length of nylon cord from her pocket. In the middle of the cord was a small loop. Gently easing the string in between the rubber door seals, she used a sawing motion to drag one end along the top of the door and the other down the side, carefully lowering the loop towards the pop-up button lock on the top of the door trim. Once she had worked the loop around the button, she pulled outwards on both ends of the string to tighten the loop, then upwards to lift the button and open the lock.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Constable,” said Mrs. Patel, climbing into the van.

  “No problem,” said Dorothy, “and you’re fine ca
lling me Dorothy, Mrs. Patel.”

  Showering Dorothy with thanks and praise, Mrs. Patel set off for the cash and carry in Strathbane.

  “A neat trick,” said Hamish.

  “We got lucky.” Dorothy smiled. “It doesn’t always work.”

  Walking on through the village, Hamish spotted the alarming, familiar forms of Nessie and Jessie Currie approaching. He glanced left and right but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

  “Crivens,” he muttered to Dorothy. “It’s the Currie twins. Brace yourself, Dorothy.”

  “Sergeant Macbeth!” shrieked Nessie at a volume that belied her diminutive stature. Her sister, Jessie, was the same size, had precisely the same tightly permed grey hair, exactly the same thick glasses, and an identical camel-hair coat. “We want to report a crime!”

  “A crime!” repeated her sister.

  “What crime?” Hamish asked.

  “Last night in our garden there was a peeping Tom!”

  “Peeping Tom!” chorused Jessie.

  “We’d have none of this sort of thing in Lochdubh if you weren’t such a lazy layabout!” Nessie ranted. “Keeking in through our curtains he was, and flashing.”

  “Flashing!” Jessie agreed.

  “What do you mean, ‘flashing’?” asked Hamish.

  “Flashing a torch,” said Nessie. “Very bright it was.”

  “Most peeping Toms don’t advertise their presence with flashing lights. What do you think, Constable McIver?” Hamish introduced Dorothy.

  “Would you like me to come and sit with you in the evening, ladies?” asked Dorothy. “Maybe then we could catch your intruder.”

  “A police officer in our house?” said Nessie, aghast. “What would people think? We would be the talk of the village.”

  “Talk of the village!”

  “Maybe I could come in ordinary clothes,” said Dorothy gently, “not in uniform. That wouldn’t attract attention—and if I came after dark, no one would see me at all.”

  The sisters looked at each other and nodded.

  “That would be acceptable. We will expect you this evening. We are very glad that, unlike your sergeant, you seem to be a proper police officer and not, like people have been saying, just some fluffy flibbertigibbet.”

  “Flibbertigibbet!”

  And with a curt “good morning,” the Currie twins departed, their matching brown leather shoes marching precisely in time.

  “You’re sure you want to do that?” asked Hamish once the camel-hair figures were at a safe distance. “I’d rate that as above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I feel like I need to go the extra mile if I’m ever going to be accepted here.” Dorothy smiled at him. “I need to win hearts and minds.”

  Hamish turned and called to Lugs and Sonsie. Win hearts and minds? By now he was pretty sure she had won his heart already, and he didn’t mind a bit. They walked back to the station, where Hamish loaded Lugs and Sonsie into the Land Rover.

  “Let’s see a bit of the wider patch,” he said, heading for the humpbacked bridge that led out of Lochdubh.

  The roads were quiet, the flood of summer tourists having dwindled to a trickle, and Hamish pointed out various landmarks while he drove. They pulled into a small car park by the side of Loch Assynt, and Dorothy walked a few paces towards the water, shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun reflecting off the surface. To the west she could see the distant peaks and rock faces of the Quinag mountains basking in the sunshine, and to the east the towering presence of Ben More Assynt. Hamish let his pets out to run around.

  “It’s lovely here,” she said. “It feels so . . . old.”

  “There’s no doubt about that,” Hamish agreed. “Around here we have some of the oldest rocks in the world. The tops of these mountains stood out above the ice sheet when everything else was buried under glaciers.

  “Down that way at the head of the loch is Inchnadamph, and beyond it the Bone Caves where they found human remains over five thousand years old and animal bones they say are up to ten times as old, including polar bears.”

  “Polar bears?” Dorothy looked sceptical. “Would you be pulling my leg, Sergeant Macbeth?”

  “Not at all,” Hamish laughed. “Every word is true. And down there”—he pointed to a promontory where stood a ruined stone tower and ancient castle walls slowly crumbling into the loch—“is Ardvreck Castle, once home to the Macleods of Assynt.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It was struck by lightning over two hundred and fifty years ago. There are those who believe it was an act of God to cleanse the area of the Devil’s influence.”

  “The Devil? In a place as beautiful as this?”

  “Aye, Auld Clootie himself. Follow the loch west and beyond, out over the Minch to the islands, and you will come to the Macleods’ ancestral home in the Hebrides. Assynt was their foothold on the mainland, with Mackay country to the north and the Mackenzies to the south.

  “The first Laird wanted the castle built quickly to defend Assynt against the Mackays and Mackenzies, but labour was scarce and the stonemasons struggled in terrible weather. The Devil came to hear of his troubles and appeared to the Laird in the part-built castle, offering to complete Ardvreck in return for his soul. The Laird was not prepared to spend eternity in the fiery pits of Hell and tried to negotiate with the Devil. Just then the Laird’s daughter, Eimhir, strolled by the window. She was a rare beauty and fair took the Devil’s breath away. He instantly offered to finish the castle in return for her hand in marriage. The Laird agreed, the castle was finished, and Eimhir, as was the custom in those days, was told to prepare for her wedding, without knowing whom she was to marry.

  “A grand wedding was planned in the castle’s great hall, but on the morning of her wedding day, Eimhir discovered who was about to take her as his wife. She was horrified and hurled herself from the high tower into the depths of the loch. Yet Eimhir did not drown. She hid from the Devil in caverns in the deepest part of the loch, becoming the seldom-seen Mermaid of Assynt.

  “Whenever the waters of the loch rise, turning yon spit of land into an island, it is said to be because Eimhir is weeping a flood of tears for her lost life on dry land.”

  “That’s quite a tale.” Dorothy smiled. “Is that the sort of story you were brought up on?”

  “Not really,” Hamish admitted. “It’s mainly from Wikipedia. The tourists love all that stuff.”

  Dorothy laughed, then pointed to another ruin on the shore of the loch. “And what’s that? Looks like it must have been a big mansion.”

  “That it was,” said Hamish. “The Mackenzies eventually seized Ardvreck but the new Laird’s wife found the castle too draughty, so he built her a fine house. They entertained with great feasts and dancing until one Saturday night when midnight was approaching, one of the pipers refused to continue playing because he would not desecrate the Sabbath. He was cast out into the snow and the revellers carried on drinking and dancing. That night the house was burned to the ground and the lone piper was the only one present that evening who survived. Some say that, when the snow lies thick on the ground on dark winter nights, you can sometimes see lights in the house and hear the skirl of the pipes and the dancers laughing and whooping.”

  “Does everything on our patch have a story to tell?”

  “Pretty much.” Hamish grinned. “And how about you? They sent me your police service record, but there’s nothing much in it about your background.”

  Dorothy lowered her eyes to the ground and Hamish felt a sudden chill, as though a cloud had passed in front of the sun.

  “There’s not that much to tell,” she said quietly. “A succession of foster homes, never knew any real family, and then I joined the police and started to make something of myself. What’s that? Sounds like a . . .”

  Hamish turned towards the road in time to see a low, sleek, red sports car come screaming past, disappearing in the blink of an eye round a bend that to
ok the road north towards Unapool.

  “Bloody hell!” Hamish breathed. “Quick—let’s get after him.” He called his pets back to the car.

  “You surely don’t expect to catch that car,” said Dorothy, climbing into the Land Rover and fastening her seat belt, “in this old heap?”

  “This old heap,” said Hamish, frowning at her, “will do just fine, for I well know where he’s headed.”

  The tyres spat out a shower of gravel as Hamish gunned the Land Rover’s engine, swinging out of the car park onto the road. He snatched up his phone and pressed a speed-dial number.

  “Dougie, incoming. Hold on to him as long as you can. I’m on my way.”

  “Who’s Dougie?”

  “Dougie Tennant is a mechanic. He has a petrol station on the road to Scourie. That car will want to stop there. There’s a right big old-fashioned clock on the front of the building and the driver will want to take a photograph with the clock in the background to prove how fast he got there. My guess is he’s doing the North Coast Five Hundred.”

  “The tourist route?”

  “Aye, it’s intended for tourists, and they can take a week or more to travel the whole route, but there’s some as like to challenge their pals to see how fast they can cover the five hundred miles. Our man in the red car will have come from Inverness, or Lochcarron, or wherever else along the route his racing pals have made their base.”

  “Most of these roads aren’t great for fast driving.”

  “No, they’re not, but these idiots don’t realise that until it’s too late. Dougie will switch off his petrol pumps and pretend there’s a fault until we get there.”