hammered like a wasp against the glass protection of her fantasy.
¦
“Now, promise me you won’t take a dram,” said Jamie Ross, after showing Sandy Carmichael round the premises.
Sandy shuddered. “I’ll neffer touch the stuff again.”
Jamie looked at him uneasily. It would just be like Sandy to go and get drunk and prove Mainwaring right. But Jamie was soft-hearted and knew Sandy needed some money badly, and more than money, he needed the self- respect of being trusted with a job.
Sandy was a tall, thin man in his forties. His face had an unhealthy, bleached look about it, but the hands now holding one of Jamie ‘s coffee-cups were steady. Jamie remembered having to hold Sandy’s hands so he could get the coffee down him.
Nothing could really go wrong, Jamie reassured himself.
There had never been a burglary in Cnothan. No one even bothered to lock his car.
He wondered whether to ask that policeman to drop in over the weekend just to see that things were all right. But that would show a lack of trust in Sandy, and Sandy certainly, did look on the road to recovery.
Hamish found himself surprisingly busy. A sharp phone call from police headquarters in Strathbane told him what MacGregor had not – that he had to patrol a much wider area of surrounding countryside than he had expected. He still found time to call on Diarmuid Sinclair and persuade the crofter to see his family. But to his disappointment, there were no more relaxed coffee sessions with Jenny, who was either painting furiously or not at home. She’d said she went walking to clear her brain. Hamish had offered to go with her, but she said she liked to be alone. Once more, his three months’ stay in Cnothan stretched out into an eternity of winter days.
? Death of an Outsider ?
4
Ah! Who has seen the mailed lobster rise.
—JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
Sandy Carmichael arrived at the
The office was warm and quiet. Sandy pulled a tattered romance, The Laird’s Passion, from his pocket, and began to read. Unfortunately, it turned out the laird was a bit of a rake, ripe for reform by the heroine, and in the intial pages, he drank large quantities. Sandy put down the book and stared into space. He hadn’t really thought about drinking this past week, the memory of his last bout of the horrors being still fresh in his mind. But now whisky seemed like a golden friend he had harshly misjudged. He could feel the taste of it on his tongue and the warmth of it coiling around his stomach.
He began to fidget, picking up pencils and putting them down. He thought about his last binge. How ill he had been!
But he had bought that fish supper from the fish-and-chip-shop and some said Murray’s fish and chips were cooked in old grease. Maybe it had been food poisoning. Maybe it had been somthing he had eaten. Or just maybe he was allergic to whisky and he should try drinking wine. Jamie had paid him his wages in advance and the money was there in his pocket, and in Sandy’s mind, money and whisky went together.
But he was proud of the fact that Jamie had trusted him and he would not let Jamie down. He would go and patrol the sheds, just like a real watchman.
How eerie the sheds were at night. The fluorescent light still left the corners in darkness. The deer carcasses hung motionless and sad. He moved on to the lobster shed. The water gurgled monotonously in the three tanks.
And then, there, right on the edge of the centre tank, he saw it. A full glass of whisky.
He stared at it, wondering if he were hallucinating. He advanced cautiously, picked it up, and sniffed it. Malt whisky! And, by the smell of it, one of the best malts.
Well, it was only one drink, he reasoned, and stuck out here, he couldn’t get any more. One drink never did anyone any harm.
He picked up the glass and took a sip. He took another, larger, sip and the tension of the past week began to leave his body. He’d soon finished the glassful. He felt happy and warm and confident. A few more wouldn’t matter. It was Saturday night. The Clachan would be warm and full of company and noise. And he had money.
He would lock up the office, but there was no need to lock the sheds. Jamie never locked them; he was more worried about his filters packing up than he was about crime. Half an hour at The Clachan and then he would come back and settle down and read that romance. A gust of wind howled around the buildings like a banshee. He thought briefly of the haunting of the Mainwarings. That new copper had been questioning an awful lot of people in that innocent-seeming, I-have-just-dropped-by-for-a-gossip way of his, but whoever had frightened Mrs. Mainwaring, it hadn’t been criminals. The Mainwarings deserved to be driven out of Cnothan – well, him, anyway.
Feeling better than he had in a long time, Sandy drove carefully down into Cnothan. He decided that if Hamish Macbeth was in the bar, then he would buy a packet of cigarettes and take himself off. It was still early evening. There were only a few youths in the bar, all looking remarkably Dickensian in their skin-tight trousers and short jackets. They had pinched white faces and lank hair. Most of them were drunk already, and the giant of a barman, Hector Dunn, was wondering whether that new policeman knew it was part of his duties to turn up at The Clachan on Saturday nights and remove the car keys of anyone who had drunk over the limit.
He tried phoning the police station, but there was no reply. He phoned Jenny Lovelace in case Hamish was there, the gossip about Hamish’s visit and attempted visits having spread around the town like wildfire, but she said she hadn’t seen him. Her voice sounded funny, as if she were crying.
Hamish was, at that very moment, speeding fast out of Cnothan. A report of an assault on one of the customers at a fishing hotel some thirty miles out of town had just come in.
Sandy drank up a double whisky and ordered another. He immediately became sentimental. When Hector asked him why he wasn’t ‘minding the store,’ Sandy said that Jamie Ross knew nothing would happen, and hadn’t Jamie in the kindness of his heart left a glass of good whisky on the edge of one of the tanks in the lobster shed for Sandy? It all went to show Jamie knew he, Sandy, could handle his liquor. He put some of his change in the jukebox and selected a Frank Sinatra record and sat down. ‘I did it my way,’ sang the famous voice. How wise, thought Sandy, nodding his head up and down. Story of my life, he thought.
He began to sing along with the record. The youths jeered and catcalled and Hector threw them out.
The bar began to fill up with the locals, men at first, and then later their wives, come to curb the expense of a Saturday night’s drinking.
Faces swam in front of Sandy, and voices offered to buy him a drink. The locals were violently jealous of Jamie Ross. Not only did he make a great deal of money, but he did not hide the fact. His new white Mercedes had caused a great deal of heart-burning. To a number of the locals, it seemed like a good joke to get Sandy drunk. Nothing would happen to Jamie’s business, of course, but he would be furious when he got back to find his watchman away sleeping off another drinking bout.
Sandy became dimly aware that Hector was demanding his car keys, and with the cunning of the drunk, he said he had walked and did not have his Land Rover with him. Then Hector was calling ‘Time!’ and Sandy was aware of the sharp cold outside the pub, of people laughing and teasing him.
He climbed into his rusty Land Rover and then his mind went blank. He drove home in a total drunken blackout.
Sandy Carmichael awoke at noon the following day. His mouth felt like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. He drank great gulps of cold water and splashed his face. It was then he remembered his job.
He was still wearing the clothes he had worn the night before. He scrambled out and drove to the
His mind worked feverishly. Jamie and his family would be back on the last train. He must get the second half
