She knocked sharply on the door of the headmaster’s study, and, without waiting for a reply, she went in, dragging the weeping children behind her.
Ian pressed his ear against the panels of the door, “Here!” cried the girl called Gemma. “You cannae do that. I’ll tell on you!”
“Go tell,” snarled Ian over his shoulder, and then he listened hard.
¦
By the time Hamish Macbeth arrived at the ring of standing stones, there was already quite a large crowd gathered. His police Land Rover had been stopped by other cars and pedestrians, all crying to him about the skeleton up on the moors.
The crowd parted to let him through. The skeleton lay in all its horrible whiteness under a bleak windy sky.
Hamish walked forward and knelt down by the skeleton. The whiteness of the bone depressed him. He had been hoping it would turn out to be another joke, that it would prove to be a skeleton used by medical students, but this one was too new.
“I’m Dr. Brodie,” said a red-haired man, coming up to join him. “Is this a joke?”
“I hope so,” said Hamish. “But I don’t think so. What do you make of it?”
The doctor knelt down beside him and took out a strong magnifying glass. “I’ve no doubt the pathologist will tell us soon enough, but I’m baffled.” He raised the skull gently and lay down with his head on the ground and peered at the back of it. “Aye,” he murmured, “whoever it was had his neck broken. It’ll come away in your hands if you’re not careful. And see here…” He pointed to the left arm bone. “There’s tiny scratches all over the bone.”
“Acid?”
“No, definitely not acid.” He sat back on his heels. “Mainwaring’s missing, isn’t he?”
“Aye,” said Hamish, “and Sandy Carmichael. Teeth. What about teeth?”
The doctor peered at the skull. “None at all,” he said gloomily. “Can’t be Carmichael. I happen to know he had his own teeth. I don’t know about Mainwaring. He never consulted me. Went to some doctor in Edinburgh.”
Hamish glanced round anxiously at the swelling crowd. “I’ll need help,” he said urgently. “While I phone, you pick out the most reliable from the crowd and get them to find ropes and groundsheets. I want the whole place roped off and groundsheets over as much of the area surrounded by the stones as you can manage.”
When Hamish returned after using the car phone in the Land Rover, the doctor and his helpers were busy spreading tarpaulins over the turf.
Hamish’s heart was beating hard. After that business on Clacham Mohr, he had hoped never to be the butt of a practical joke again, but he found he was praying that this would turn out to be one. But the sky was dark and windy and his Highland soul felt menace in the very air.
He took out his notebook and began to make rapid shorthand notes.
Then he was approached by a group of men and women – reporters from the Northern Times, Highland Times, Moray Firth Radio, and the Ross-shire Journal, all clamouring to know about witchcraft in Cnothan.
His heart sank. It was like a bad dream. He knew that the Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers would soon follow, then the television teams, then the London newspaper and television reporters. But, worst of all – once more he would be working for Detective Chief Inspector Blair of Strathbane.
Ian Gibb had found his scoop at last.
? Death of an Outsider ?
5
What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
—George Eliot
The circus came to town. All of it. The television crews with cables twisting like black snakes, the reporters, the feature writers, the photographers, the forensic team, squads of policemen to search for clues, and the fat, pompous figure of Chief Detective Inspector Blair among the lot.
Blair was determined to solve this case all on his own, without his thunder being stolen by that lanky village idiot, Hamish Macbeth, and so he told Hamish to ‘run along’ and keep the gentlemen of the press in order.
Hamish derived much bitter amusement from the spectacle of the press trying to winkle a comment out of the taciturn locals. It was Diarmuid Sinclair of all people who broke the ice. Driven out of Cnothan in the search of a friendlier interviewee, Grampian Television had come across Diarmuid in his fields. Since he had started to talk to Hamish Macbeth, there was no stopping Diarmuid. He talked and talked. He told fantastic Highland stories of witchcraft in Cnothan. He even said he believed there was a coven of witches in the town.
Diarmuid burst upon the six o’clock news and caused emerald-green jealousy in Cnothan. By evening the press were almost besieged by locals dying to be interviewed.
Hamish felt restless. Blair and his sidekicks, detectives Jimmy Anderson and Harry MacNab, were cluttering up the police station, and one of the forensic team had commandeered the Land Rover. Hamish put Towser on the leash and ambled down to The Clachan. He felt if he could find the whereabouts of Sandy Carmichael, he might find the whereabouts of William Mainwaring and the identity of the skeleton. Mrs. Mainwaring had tearfully confirmed her husband had false teeth, but it was hard to think of the means by which Mainwaring could have been reduced to bare bones so quickly.
It was pitch-black although it was only four in the afternoon, and the endless screaming wind of Sutherland was tearing at his clothes. The bar was closed but he could see a light inside and hammered on the door. After a wait of a few minutes, it was opened by Hector Gunn. “Mair questions,” he groaned when he saw Hamish. “If it isnae the press, it’s the polis. Come in.” Hamish went into the bar, which smelled of stale beer and strong disinfectant, with Towser at his heels.
“I want to know what happened when Sandy Carmichael was in here on Saturday evening,” said Hamish.
“Nothing happened. He drank himself stupid, that’s all.”
“The man is a known alcoholic. Didn’t you think buying him drinks was a form o’ murder?” said Hamish.
“Och, I wouldnae say he was an alcoholic. Jist ower-fond o’ his dram.”
Hamish looked at Hector Gunn in silence. Was there any point in saying that a man who had the DTs with remarkable regularity was obviously not a social drinker? He decided it would be a waste of time.
“Well,” said Hamish, “Let’s put it another way. Who was the keenest to buy Sandy drinks?”
“I wasnae watching, and I’ve got mair to dae with ma time,” said Hector huffily. “It was your job tae be doon here, seeing that none of them tried to drive when they had mair than enough. It was a noisy evening. Alistair Gunn, ma cousin, was in, and Dougie Macdonald. Something Mainwaring had said to Alistair was fair making him mad, although he wouldnae say what it was. He wanted a crowd of them to debag Mainwaring and throw him in the loch. They were all as fierce as lions and saying what they were going to do to Mainwaring when in he walks and they all fall silent and become sheepish and shuffle their feet and not a word is said to the man. John Sinclair and his wife, Mary, came in and Mainwaring joined them, although they didn’t want him to. Then that reporter, Ian Gibb, him from Dornoch, he was in, noisy and drunk, and Mainwaring leaves the Sinclairs and says something to him, and Gibb tries to punch him but falls on the floor. Then thae two crofters, Alec Birrell and Davey Macdonald, start shouting at Mainwaring that he’s stealing good croft land from the crofters and Mainwaring tells them to get stuffed. Then Harry Mackay puts his oar in and says Mainwaring bought those houses and left them empty out o’ spite, and Mainwaring says Mackay couldn’t get a fuck in a brothel, he was that weak. Mackay walks off in a temper. I had a lot of customers to serve but I was just about to go around the bar and stop the noise when Mainwaring left and everything quietened down after that and they were all laughing at Sandy, who was standing on his chair and trying to do an impersonation of Frank Sinatra. I asked him for his car keys but he said he didnae have his Land Rover with him.”
Hamish asked a few more questions and then went off into the blackness of late afternoon. He decided to go out to the
