up.”
“You’ll never get me on a sledge,” protested the minister’s wife, but once outside, she quailed at the thought of struggling all the way down.
“Hamish,” said Angus. “Come near.”
Hamish bent over him.
“Cnothan. Mobile home. Up on the north brae.”
“Come along, Hamish,” ordered Mrs. Wellington.
Outside, Angela and a reluctant Mrs. Wellington sat on the sledge. Hamish pushed from the back and jumped on board and they all went hurtling down, ending in a heap against a garden fence at the bottom.
“That actually was fun,” said Mrs. Wellington, standing up and brushing snow from her clothes.
¦
The thaw came quickly the following day, only to be followed by a sharp frost turning the roads treacherous. He got a call from gamekeeper Willie. “There’s a couple o’ fellows skidded off the road up north of the hotel.”
“I’ll see to it,” said Hamish.
A gritting lorry was making its way along the waterfront, spraying sand and salt. Hamish followed it out of the village and up the hill past the hotel to where two men were standing on the road, talking to Willie. Their Land Rover was lying on its side in the ditch.
Hamish got down and approached them. He stared. The older man had a beard and was accompanied by a younger man. He nodded to them and said to Willie, who was standing with his gun broken, “Get your shotgun on them.” To the two men he said, “Don’t dare move.”
He took two sets of handcuffs out of his own vehicle and handcuffed both men, who were protesting violently. He then went to their Land Rover and peered inside. A deer carcase was lying in the back. So Timmy wasn’t lying after all, he thought.
By the time he had taken them down to the police station, locked them in the one cell, phoned Strathbane, and filed a report, the ice on the roads had melted and a squad arrived from Strathbane to impound the poachers’ vehicle and take them to Strathbane. From their driving licences, he identified them as Walter Wills and Granger Home.
As they were led off, the older man turned and spat at Hamish. “You’re a dead man,” he said.
That evening, the weather remained relatively mild and the air was full of the melted snow, dripping from roofs. Hamish planned to set out the next morning to Cnothan.
He once again looked at the stew pot and plate. If the weather stayed mild, then he might run over to Strambane and return both to Lesley. He was surprised that she hadn’t contacted him. On the other hand, he should at least have sent her a note or some flowers to thank her for the meal. He sat down at his computer, contacted Interflora, and ordered a bunch of spring flowers from the Channel Islands to be sent to her. He hesitated over the message and finally wrote, “Thank you for a splendid dinner. Hamish.”
That being done, he began to write out all he knew about the murders of Catriona and Ina to get it clear in his head. The fact that the back door of Catriona’s cottage did not appear to have been forced pointed to a local who might have known where a spare key was kept. On the other hand, it had been a simple Yale lock, easily sprung with a credit card.
Every time he thought of Catriona, he felt rage building up inside him. He was sure she had been a murderess. He wished he could get down to Perth but Jimmy would get to hear of it and Hamish did not want to lose his friend. At least Blair had been quiet. As soon as a case went cold, Blair quickly concentrated on other cases, often building them out of proportion so that Daviot would hopefully forget about the murders.
His mind ranged over the men in the village. There had been no odd incomers. He knew them all. He checked into the police records of the guests who had been staying at the hotel, but they all had impeccable backgrounds. What of Ruby Connachie in Perth, who must have felt she had been cheated out of a cosy marriage? Jimmy had filed all the reports. Maybe he had incorporated the Perth interviews. To his relief, Jimmy had filed the interview with Ruby. Hamish looked dismally at her age. Ruby was now seventy-six years old. She was a staunch member of the Methodist Church. Her statement was full of hatred for Catriona. She said it was God’s punishment. On the day of Ina’s death and at the very time they estimated Ina was being murdered in Patel’s grocery store, Ruby had been having lunch in Perth with two old friends. Hamish read and reread all the reports until he realised it was late at night and he wanted to get off to Cnothan in the morning early.
¦
Great pools of melted snow lay along the waterfront as he drove off in the morning with a brisk breeze sending little waves across their surfaces. A pale sun rode high in the washed-out blue of the sky. “I wish I could see Elspeth again,” he said over his shoulder to his pets in the back.
“There he goes, talking to himself again,” said Nessie Currie, watching as the police Land Rover disappeared over the bridge at the end of the village. “That man needs a woman in his life.”
“Woman in his life,” echoed Jessie.
Hamish drove to Cnothan and then up the brae to the north. He could see no sign of a mobile home so he stopped at one of the outlying crofts.
“Do you know if there’s a woman living in a mobile home near here?” he asked a gnome-like man who answered the door of the croft house.
“Herself has gone,” said the crofter. “It wass chust afore the snow. Big truck moved the whole thing. Tellt someone she was moving ower to Bonar Bridge.”
Hamish thanked him and started off on the road to Bonar Bridge. When he got there, diligent questioning gave him the information that there was a mobile home parked on the riverbank a bit outside the village.
Bonar Bridge has a long history dating from the early Bronze Age settlements. The locals call it Bona, probably from part of its Gaelic name, Drochaid a Bhanna.
After an hour of searching, he found a mobile home, screened by trees, on a grassy bank of the river. An old Rover was parked outside.
He knocked at the door. There was no reply. He tried several times. He turned the door handle. The door swung open. The smell that met him made his heart sink. He went back to where he had parked his Land Rover and put on his blue coveralls and overboots and then donned a pair of plastic gloves. He went back to the mobile home, where the door swung back and forth in the breeze. He went inside.
There was a double bed at the end of the mobile home, and on that bed lay a plump grey-haired woman, her dead eyes staring and her chest covered with dried blood. He stepped outside and phoned Strathbane. Then he went back in again and began to carefully search around. In a drawer, he found a passport. Her name had been Fiona McNulty, aged fifty-five. Along with the passport was a chequebook and various receipts for Calor gas, food, and drink. Under the receipts was a typed note. It read, “You’re next, you whore. I’m coming for you.”
He went back outside and up to his Land Rover. He took out a picnic basket and fed the dog and cat and filled their water bowls. He had a cup of coffee from his thermos but he didn’t feel like eating anything. What on earth, if anything, could connect the dead woman with Ina Braid and Catriona? And this dead woman, Fiona McNulty, certainly did not look like a prostitute.
It seemed to take a long time for the squad to arrive from Strathbane but finally they were all assembled: pathologist, forensic team, Jimmy, and, at the head of it all, a furious Blair, knowing that Daviot would now be on his back for having not persevered in solving the first two murders.
Hamish gave his report and was told by Blair to go and start knocking at doors in Bonar Bridge. Lesley had turned up with the forensic team but she had not once looked at him. Waste of flowers, thought the ever-thrifty Hamish sourly.
Hamish knew more policemen would soon be knocking on doors as well, and he wanted to get ahead of the pack.
An elderly lady inhabited the nearest cottage. She invited Hamish into her neat parlour and exclaimed in shock over the murder. “Such a decent lady,” she mourned. “What’s your name, young man?”
“I’m Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh,” said Hamish, taking out his notebook. “And you are?”
“Mrs. Euphemia Cathcart.”
“You are English?”
“Yes. My husband was from Bonar and we moved up here when we got married. He’s been dead these twenty years. You sit there and I’ll make some tea.”
