been brought up on the croft, he would have no difficulty with the Crofters Commission.
“When I was in your house a few days ago, Mackay,” said Hamish, “I noticed you had a lot of books on your shelf on alcoholism. You knew if you left that drink for Sandy Carmichael on the lobster tank that he would drink it and then want more. That would get him out of the way. You phoned me and got me to drive out to the Angler’s Rest. You knew Mainwaring had advised Ross not to employ Sandy and would come around, poking his nose in, sooner or later. Mind you, it was a gamble, but then you are a gambler.”
Harry Mackay found his voice. It came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and said, “It’s all a load of rubbish, Macbeth. Okay, so I owed Anstruther money, but he’s your man. He had every reason to hate Mainwaring. He knew Mainwaring had pulled a fast one. And those books on alcoholism were for my sister. She was down in Inverness in the alcoholic unit and I sent away for them, but by the time I got them, she had disappeared.” His lips trembled and he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And you can’t prove it.”
Hamish kept his eyes fixed on Mackay. “Two deaths,” he said in a gentle, lilting voice. “Sandy knew what you’d done and so you killed him. Two deaths, and all for nothing. But there’s one thing you didn’t tell your friend Anstruther, and that was that the whole railway project was scrapped a month ago, and if he found you had bought him three worthless properties…We don’t have the death penalty – yet – but Anstruther would have been glad in that case to act as our executioner. He may very well yet, for I had great pleasure in telling him about the collapse of the scheme. The bailie he had bribed to give him information from the first secret meeting about the railway had resigned by the time of the second secret meeting, which cancelled the project.”
“So what’s it to be, Mackay? A nice safe police cell or Anstruther’s boys after you?”
There was a long silence. No one spoke, no one moved.
The rising wind moaned around The Clachan and snow pattered on the window panes.
“It wasn’t planned,” said Mackay in a tired voice. “I followed him. He was going to report me to my head office. They would have fired me. I daren’t lose my job. I didn’t think Mainwaring really knew about the railway project. I thought he was just buying up cheap property in the hope it would rise in value one day. He never had a good head for business.
“He insulted me in the The Clachan. I left and then waited for him to leave. I followed him to Cnothan Game. I found a bit of rusty pipe by the road and put it in my pocket. But, man, man, I still didn’t mean to kill him. He poked around and tried the office door but it was locked. I followed him into the lobster shed. He sat on the edge of the main tank and took out a notebook and began to write. There was an empty glass by the side of the tank. He put the note down by the tank. I knew it was a note for Jamie saying something about Sandy abandoning his post. Mainwaring never thought Sandy would return. All my hatred for the man boiled up in me and at the same time I realized in a flash that with him gone, Mrs. Mainwaring might sell and then I would be safe from Anstruther. I struck him hard, and he fell into – ”
But Blair moved like lightning. He thrust Hamish aside and clapped a large beefy hand over Harry Mackay’s mouth.
“Enough o’ this,” he shouted. “Anderson! MacNab! Take him off tae Strathbane and book him.”
“And so,” said Hamish Macbeth that evening to Jenny Lovelace, “I don’t know why Blair shut him up at that point.” But Hamish did know. Blair had seen the bit about the lobsters coming up.
Hamish wondered how on earth Blair would suppress the evidence.
Jenny looked at his drawn face and said quietly, “Want to be left alone tonight?”
Hamish most definitely did not want to be left alone, but he felt he had been using Jenny in a way. Proposal first. Bed later.
He nodded bleakly and Jenny kissed him gently on the cheek, patted Towser, and went out.
Just then, the phone rang and he went to answer it. It was Jimmy Anderson, phoning from Strath bane. “We’ve got the full confession,” he said cheerfully. “Like to hear the rest?”
“Go ahead,” said Hamish.
“Well, to take the story up from where Mackay left off, he just sacked him on the back of the neck and Mainwaring toppled over into the tank. Mackay fled, taking the note with him. When he heard about the skeleton, he knew whose it was and how it got to be one, but he didn’t know who had taken it out of the tank and cleaned up, see. He prayed that it might be some friendly local trying to cover up for the murderer, some local who wanted Mainwaring dead. Then Sandy turned up. Mackay had dropped his gold pen out of his jacket pocket when he’d bent over the tank as Mainwaring sank. Sandy had taken the clothes and all the other bits and burned the things that would burn, chucked the false teeth on the moor, and thrown the watch in Loch Cnothan. He’d even shovelled up all the ash, put it in a sack with a brick, and sunk it in a peat bog.
“He wanted money. Mackay arranged to meet him up the river and when Sandy got there, Mackay waited until he had counted the money and put it in his jacket and then took out his trusty rusty pipe and clobbered Sandy the way he had clobbered Mainwaring and then he stuffed the body under a bush. Then he remembered the money. He wanted to go back and retrieve it, but found he couldn’t bring himself to go near the corpse.”
“How are you going to keep it quiet about the lobsters?” asked Hamish.
“I don’t know. Maybe Blair’ll try to pervert the course of justice by saying, “Look, laddie, shut up about the lobsters and I’ll see you get a lenient sentence,” but I don’t know. Who was the reporter who told you about the railway? That one in London?”
“It wasnae really a reporter,” said Hamish. “It was my second cousin, who’s a cleaning woman on the Scottish Telegraph. She reads everything she finds in the wastepaper buckets. She told me last year and I forgot about it until the other day. So Mainwaring in a way brought about his own death by deciding to interfere in Jamie’s life. He left that glass of whisky on the tank, and Mackay got him when he went back to retrieve it. So it wasn’t a cold-bloodedly, planned murder; Mackay didn’t leave the whisky for Sandy. The witchcraft had nothing to do with it…och, I suppose you’ll be telling me next that that hoax call which got me out of the way was also made by someone else.”
“Aye. Mackay swears blind it wasnae him.”
“Alistair Gunn,” said Hamish suddenly. “I’ll bet it was Alistair Gunn. He was stinking o’ fear when I arrived at The Clachan. He probably though if the call was traced to him, then he would be charged with the murder. I gather they’ve released what’s left of Mainwaring and the funeral’s tomorrow.”
“Aye, are you going?”
“No,” said Hamish. “I think I’ll spend the day in bed. I found your murderer and I think I deserve a break.”
“You’ve got the luck o’ the devil,” said Anderson.
“‘Cheery bye. Save me some whisky for your next murder.”
¦
The shrilling of the telephone at seven the following morning dragged Hamish from his bed. He stumbled through to the office and picked it up. Blair’s voice at the other end sounded almost obscenely cheerful.
“Great news, laddie,” he crowed. “All our troubles are over.”
“What happened?” asked Hamish.
“Mackay hanged hisself in his cell last night. He can’t talk and we can say what we like aboot the death.”
“So what’s the official line?” asked Hamish.
“Oh, something like he cut off the flesh and threw it in the loch and then when he put the skeleton on the moor, the crows and buzzards and little wee foxes cleaned the rest – hence the scores on the bones. Sandy and the lobsters hasnae been mentioned.”
“Are ye sure it wass the suicide?” Hamish’s voice was sharp.
There was a long silence and then Blair’s voice sounded again, low and menacing this time. “list you keep your long Highland nose oot o’ this case. It’s no longer got anything else to dae wi’ you.” And then he banged down the receiver.
Hamish went through to get dressed. He felt sick. He kept seeing pictures in his head of a midnight visit to a cell and a prisoner being forcibly strung up.
When the phone rang again, he waited for a long time before going through and answering it. It was Jimmy An-derson.
“I’ve heard the news,” said Hamish bleakly.
