“Blethering idiot,” snapped Smeedon, beginning to stride towards his own car. Hamish put out a long arm and held Smeedon’s shoulder in a strong grip. “I’m not asking ye if Miss Kerr passed her test,” said Hamish, “for you were determined to fail her before she even got behind the wheel. Whit hae ye got against the lassies? I wonder what Maisie MacCallum would say if she knew what you were really like?”
Smeedon looked as if he had been struck by lightning. His face took on a grey tinge. Like quite a lot of first- time philanderers, he was convinced his doings were immune from the probings of prying eyes.
“You wouldnae dare,” he breathed.
“I’m a verra kindly man,” said Hamish, “but I hate injustice and that Alison Kerr is a champion driver – everything exactly by the book. Now if I thought you’d failed her out o’ spite, there’s no knowing what I’d do. They’ve been complaints about ye before but always from failed drivers and it was probably put down to disappointment on their part. But what if a policeman were to add his voice to the complaints? And what if that self-same policeman were a verra moral fellow and decided Mrs. Smeedon ought to know what you were up to…?”
“I passed Miss Kerr,” said Smeedon desperately.
“You told her?”
“Aye, well I was thinking of something else and made a wee mistake.”
“Just you stand there and write out that she’s passed and that’ll be an end o’ the matter,” said Hamish.
The examiner rapidly scribbled out a form that stated that Alison Kerr had passed her driving test. Hamish twitched it out of his fingers. “Now off with you,” he said sternly.
“You’ll not…?”
“No, I won’t be saying a word to Mrs. Smeedon,” said Hamish, but, as the examiner scurried to his car, he added softly, “but that complaint about you failing people out o’ spite is going in just the same.”
He went over to the Renault, opened the door, and slid into the passenger seat.
“Here,” he said, holding out Alison’s pass form, “dry your eyes wi’ this.”
Alison took it blindly and then blinked down at it through her thick glasses. She stared at it. Then she scrubbed her eyes under her glasses with her sopping handkerchief and looked again.
“But he said I’d failed.”
“We all make mistakes,” said Hamish comfortably. “He’s put it right.”
Alison flung her arms around him and pressed a damp kiss against his cheek. “You did this,” she said in a choked voice. “You made him do it.”
“Now, now,” said Hamish, pulling free and resisting a strong temptation to wipe his cheek with the back of his hand. “Never mind who did or said what. You’re free to drive on your own.”
Alison looked at him shyly. “It’s nearly lunch time,” she said, “and I booked a table for us at the hotel…you know, for a celebration lunch. My little surprise.”
“That’s very nice,” said Hamish, “but I am on duty.”
“But
Hamish opened the door and got out. How sweet the air outside was! It was as if Alison had been wearing a cloying sticky perfume although she never wore scent. “Take yourself for a drive and enjoy yourself,” said Hamish, bending down and looking in at her. “Oh, and get a photocopy of that form and then send it off to the DVLC and you should get your licence back through the post in a couple of weeks’ time.” And before Alison could say any more, Hamish closed the car door and strolled off.
It was as well for Hamish that Alison was more obsessed with driving than she was with him or she would have chased after him. She sat rather bleakly, watching him in the driving mirror. Then she looked again at that pass form and a slow glow of sheer happiness spread through her body. She was free! She could drive anywhere she liked. The sun was sparkling and the road in front of her curved along the waterfront, over a humpbacked bridge and up the hill out of Lochdubh.
She switched on the engine and moved off. A car hooted and swept past her and the driver shouted something out of the window. She slammed on the brakes and sat shaking. She had forgotten to signal. She had even forgotten to check her mirrors or look around.
She tried to move off again, but the car would not budge. She switched the engine off again and covered her face with her hands. Think! Then she slowly removed her hands from her face and looked down at the handbrake. She had forgotten to release it.
There was no Hamish beside her now to prompt her.
She squared her shoulders, switched on the engine again, moved into first gear, checked her mirrors, signalled, took a quick look over her shoulder and moved off slowly. By the time she had reached the top of the road leading out of Lochdubh, she had to pull onto the side of the road to flex her hands which had pins and needles caused by her terrified grip on the wheel.
“This will never do,” she said aloud.
She started off again. The road was quiet. No cars behind her and none coming the other way. Slowly, she increased her speed until she was bowling along, her hands relaxed on the wheel, but only dimly aware of the stupendous majesty of the Sutherland mountains soaring on either side of the road. She drove on and on, down past the Kyles of Sutherland and the towns of Bonar Bridge and Ardgay and then up the famous Struie Pass – famous for being a motorist’s nightmare – but Alison did not know that and put her fear down to her own inexperience. The road climbed and climbed, seeming almost perpendicular and then she was running along the pass through the top of the mountains and finally down and down the twisting hairpin bends towards the Cromarty Firth which lay sparkling and glinting in the pale sunlight.
Alison came to a roundabout. A road went on over a mile-long bridge towards Inverness. On the other side of the roundabout lay the road to Dingwall. Dingwall sounded like a smaller town and therefore one with manageable traffic. She went round the roundabout and realised as she took the Dingwall road that she had forgotten to signal. All her nervousness returned.
She parked in one of the tiny town’s surprisingly many car parks, choosing a space well away from other cars and spending a quite twenty minutes reversing the Renault into a space that could comfortably have held three trucks.
She carefully locked up and went down to the main street to look at the shops. She stopped by a phone box and, on impulse, went in and phoned the police station in Lochdubh. There was no reply. Then Alison noticed the light was fading fast. She had a long way to drive back. She headed back towards the car park, feeling in her pocket for the car keys.
Where the keys should have been was a large hole.
Alison stopped dead. She felt sick. She retraced her steps, scanning the ground. But Dingwall should receive an award for being the cleanest town in Britain – they vacuum the streets. There wasn’t even a scrap of paper.
She stopped someone and asked directions to the police station.
The police station was not at all like Hamish’s cosy village quarters. It was a large modern building with a plaque on the wall stating that the foundation stone had been laid by Princess Alexandria. She pushed open the door and went in.
A fey-looking girl was standing at the reception desk, chain-smoking.
“My keys,” Alison blurted out. “I’ve lost my car keys.”
“We’ve got them,” said the girl, lighting a fresh cigarette off the stub of the old one. “Just been handed in.” And then she stood looking at Alison through the curling cigarette smoke.
“Oh, that’s wonderftil.” Alison felt limp with relief. “I’ll just take them.”
“You can’t get them till Monday,” replied the girl.
“Monday! This is Friday afternoon. Monday!”
“You see that door behind me?” The girl indicated a door behind her and a little to the right which was like a house door with a large letter box. “Well, the found stuff gets put through that letter box where it falls down to the bottom of a wire cage on the other side. The person who has the key to the door has gone off for a long weekend.”
“But someone else must have the key,” said Alison, her voice taking on the shrill note of the coward trying to be assertive.
