enhance your prowess. It swells the genitals and could cause damage to your kidneys. I will deal with Miss Beldame myself. None of you is to go near her.”
Shocked faces stared up at him. He surrendered the pulpit to Mr. Wellington and went and sat in a pew at the back.
At the end of the service, he slipped out of the church and went back to the police station. He planned to visit Catriona after he had eaten his lunch.
But there was a knock at the kitchen door and then the Currie sisters walked in.
“This is a bad business,” said Nessie.
“Bad business,” echoed Jessie, who always repeated the end of her sister’s sentences.
“I thought you pair would ha’ known about it before this,” said Hamish.
“We did,” said Nessie. “But she’s a witch!”
“A witch,” said Jessie.
“Look here. There are no such things as witches.”
“Keep your voice down,” hissed Nessie, looking furtively around.
“Voice down,” came the Greek chorus.
Hamish sighed. He knew the highlanders were deeply superstitious.
“I’m going to deal with her,” he said firmly. “By tomorrow, you’ll have nothing to worry about. I’ll kill her if I have to. Don’t look like that. Just joking. Now, off with you.”
¦
Hamish ate his lunch, fed his pets, told them to stay behind, and set off for Catriona Beldame’s cottage. A group of villagers followed him. He kept turning and shouting “Stay back!” and they would stop, but as soon as he moved on, they would follow again, keeping a discreet distance.
He knocked at the door. Catriona answered his knock and stood there, one hand on the lintel. She was dressed in a long black velvet gown that made her look like the witch she was supposed to be.
“Well?”
“I am here to tell you,” said Hamish, “that if you continue to supply drugs to the people of this village, it will be the worse for you.”
She gave a mocking laugh. “Couldn’t get your search warrant, could you?”
He turned and looked at her Volvo, parked at the side of the cottage. He went over to it and shone his torch on it. “You need new tyres,” he said. “You cannot drive that car until you have them fitted. Your vehicle is not roadworthy.”
She followed him. The wind had risen and was whipping her hair about her face.
She pointed a long finger at him. “I cursed you, remember?” she said. “Black days are coming, Hamish Macbeth.”
“Oh, go to hell,” shouted Hamish. “I’ll haff ye out o’ my village and on your broomstick if it’s the last thing I do. Catriona Beldame, indeed. What’s your real name, lassie? Tracy Smellie, Josie Clapp, something like that? I’ll find out, you know.”
She flew at him, her hands clawing at his face.
He gave her a hearty push and she went sprawling in the heather.
Hamish went and stood over her. “Take my advice and leave by tomorrow.”
He turned and strode away down the brae. The watchers had vanished.
¦
The next day, a case of shoplifting took him over to Cnothan, his least favourite place. It turned out to be the theft of nothing more than chocolate bars. He identified the two culprits from the security camera, persuaded the angry shopkeeper not to press criminal charges, and went off to see the boys’ parents. He was damned if he was going to give two little boys a criminal record this early in their lives. It all took more time than he had expected between getting the boys, two brothers, from school, and taking them home to their shocked mother. Mother and boys were then taken to the shop, where they apologised while the mother paid for the stolen goods. After that, he stopped off to see some friends in Cnothan before heading home.
He took his binoculars and went out onto the waterfront and focussed them on the ‘witch’s’ cottage. Her car was still there. He wondered what to do. He was sure that if he arrested her, they would now not find anything sinister in those bottles of hers. She would have destroyed anything incriminating. If he threatened her any more, he could be charged with police harassment.
He returned to the station to find Jimmy Anderson waiting for him. “You’re going to be up on a disciplinary charge, Hamish, unless you can come up with a good explanation.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your newcomer, Catriona Beldame, has reported you for assault.”
“She tried to claw my face, I pushed her over, and I’ve got witnesses. Come ben and get your whisky and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Seated at the kitchen table a few minutes later, Jimmy listened to Hamish’s story.
When Hamish had finished, he said, “Why didn’t the bampots just order Viagra from the Internet?”
“I don’t think they’d know how to,” said Hamish. “We’re still a superstitious lot here. I checked the police files under her daft name, but I couldn’t find anything. That woman is evil!”
“What is it with women?” asked Jimmy. “You see all these magazines telling them how to enhance their sex life.”
“I think you’ll find the complaining women all had children and were past the menopause. They’d rather read a romance or fantasise about a film star than have their old man fumbling again.”
“Miserable old biddies. They should let the old man get his leg over occasionally.”
“I hate it all,” said Hamish. “I’m telling you, Jimmy, the two biggest motives for murder are sex and money.”
“Maybe she was supplying one and getting the other for services rendered,” suggested Jimmy.
“There’s not that much money in Lochdubh.”
“Come on, man! I bet there’s money hidden under some of the mattresses here. They’re a canny lot. Probably have been saving for years.”
“I chust wish she would go away,” mourned Hamish. “The men know she made a fool of them.”
¦
The following two days were quiet. No sign of the witch, and yet Hamish swore he could almost see a miasma of evil hanging over his beloved village.
Then on the third morning, he received a visit from the milkman, Hughie Cromart. “The milk outside the Beldame woman’s cottage hasn’t been taken in,” he said. “You should get up there and see if anything has happened to her.”
Hamish felt a spasm of black dread. The fear that one of the men in the village would do something to the ‘witch’ that had been lurking around his subconscious now came roaring up into his brain.
“I’ll get up there right away,” he said.
It was a crisp cold morning. There had been a thick frost during the night. The loch lay as still as a sheet of metal under a grey sky. The tops of the two mountains soaring above Lochdubh were covered in snow.
Two buzzards sailed lazily above the cottage as Hamish approached.
He knocked at the door and waited.
No reply.
He tried the handle but the door was locked. He then tried to peer into the two windows at the front of the cottage, but the curtains were drawn.
Hamish wondered what to do. If he broke in and she was all right, she would add the charge of breaking and entering to the one of police harassment. He walked round to the back.
There was one door and one window at the back, but the door was locked and the curtains were tightly drawn across the window.
He studied the lock. It was a simple Yale one. He took out a thin strip of metal and forced the lock.
Hamish switched on the light. He found himself in the room where she kept all her potions, the room he had been in before. He went across the tiny hall and opened the door to the room opposite.
It had been fitted up as a bedroom. He could see that in the dim light filtering through the curtains. There
