bothered to join the police force, Hamish. Why not jist be a Highland layabout, draw the dole, poach a bit?”
“Oh, the police suns me chust fine. Also, if I had the big crime here again, they might send me an assistant and I could not be doing with being scrubbed out o’ house and home.”
“So what are you doing here when you ought to be wi’ your sweetie? A rare hand with the scrubbing brush is our Priscilla, talking about being scrubbed out.”
Hamish looked at him blankly and Mr. Johnston suddenly felt he had been impertinent. “Well, I’ve a wee bit o’ gossip for you,” he said hurriedly. “Drim is on your beat, isn’t it?”
“Aye, but nothing’s ever happened there and never will. It must be the dullest place in the British Isles.”
“Oh, but something has happened. Beauty’s come to Drim and it ain’t a lassie but a fellow. Folks say he’s like a film star.”
“What brings him to a place like Drim?”
“God knows. Jist strolled into the village one day, bought a wee bit of a croft house and started doing it up. Posh chap. English.”
“Oh, one o’ them.”
“Aye, he’ll play at being a villager for a bit and talk about the simple life and then one winter up here will send him packing.”
“The winters aren’t so bad.”
“I amnae talking about the weather, Hamish. I’m talking about that shut-down feeling that happens up here in the winter where you sit and think the rest of the world has gone off somewhere to have a party, leaving you alone in a black wilderness.”
“I don’t feel like that.”
“No? Well, I suppose it’s because I’m from the city,” said Mr. Johnston, who came from Glasgow.
“I might take a look over at Drim and pay a visit to this fellow,” said Hamish. “Any chance of borrowing one of the hotel cars?”
“What’s happened to the police Land Rover?”
Hamish shifted awkwardly. “It’s down at the police station. I walked here. Chust wanted to save myself the walk back.”
“Well, if you’re not going to have it away too long,” said Mr. Johnston, stopping himself in time from pointing out that when Hamish returned the car, he would still have to walk back to Lochdubh. He opened the desk drawer and fished out a set of car keys. “Take the Volvo. But don’t keep it out all day. The new guests will be arriving. I’ll just give Priscilla a ring and tell her she’d better be here to welcome them.”
Hamish took the keys and strolled off. As he drove out on the road to Drim, he felt as if he were on holiday, as if he were driving away from the monstrous regiment of women, the rule of women as John Knox had meant, the one particular woman in his life who was hell-bent on making a successful man of him. Priscilla had determinedly set out to make friends with the wife of Chief Superintendent Peter Daviot. Hamish knew Priscilla wanted him to be promoted higher. But promotion meant living in Strathbane, promotion meant exams, promotion meant becoming a detective and never being allowed back to Lochdubh again. He shoved his worried thoughts firmly to the back of his mind.
The wind was rising and tearing the milky clouds into ragged wisps. The sun shone fitfully down, the heather blazed purple along the flanks of the mountains, and as he gained the crest of a hill he looked down across a breath-taking expanse of mountain and moorland, with the tarns of Sutherland gleaming sapphire-blue among the heather where the clumsy grouse stumbled, flapped, and rose before the swift feet of a herd of deer.
He concentrated his mind on wondering what had brought this Adonis to a place like Drim.
Drim was a peculiar place at the end of a thin sea loch on a flat piece of land surrounded by towering black mountains. The loch itself was black, a corridor of a loch between the high walls of the mountains where little grew among the scree and black rock but stunted bushes. The only access to Drim, unless one was foolhardy enough to brave a trip by sea, was by a narrow one-track road over the hills from the east. The village was a huddle of houses with a church, a community hall, a general store, but no police station. The village was policed from Lochdubh by Hamish Macbeth, although the villagers hardly ever saw him. There had never been any crime in Drim, not even drunkenness, for there was no pub, and no alcohol for sale.
He parked the car and went into the general store run by a giant of a man called Jock Kennedy. “Hamish,” said Jock, “have not seen you in ages. What iss bringing you to us?”
“Just curiosity,” said Hamish. “I hear you’ve got an incomer.”
“Oh, aye. Peter Hynd. Nice young man. Bought that old croft house o’ Geordie Black’s up above the village. Putting in his own drains. Old Geordie just used a hut out the back for a toilet and there wasnae a bathroom, old Geordie not believing in washing all ower except for funerals and weddings.”
“Geordie’s dead then?”
“Aye, died six month ago, and his daughter sold the house. She was as surprised as anyone, I am telling you, when this young fellow offered her the money for it. She thocht it would be lying there until it fell to bits.”
“I might just go and hae a wee word with him,” said Hamish. He bought a bottle of fizzy lemonade and two sausage rolls and ate and drank, sitting outside on a bench in frost of the shop. Priscilla, he thought with a stab of guilt, would no doubt have prepared a nourishing lunch for him, brown rice and something or other. He should have phoned her.
The loch was only a few yards away, its black waters sucking at the oily stones on the beach. Every thing was very quiet and still. The mountains shut out the wind and shut out most of the light. A grim, sad place. What on earth was a beautiful young Englishman doing here?
The village consisted of several cottages grouped about the store. It was a Highland village that time had forgotten. The only new building was the ugly square community hall with its tin roof, its walls painted acid- sulphurous yellow. Behind the hall was the church, a small stone building with a Celtic cross at one end of the roof and an iron bell at the other. Hamish realized with surprise that although he knew Jock Kennedy, he hardly knew anyone else in this odd village to speak to. He rose and stretched and gave the last of one of his sausage rolls to Towser and then set out for Peter Hynd’s cottage.
He heard the sounds of pick on rock as he approached. It was an ugly little grey cottage with a corrugated- iron roof. A new fence had been put around a weedy garden where no flowers grew. He walked round the cottage towards the sound of the pick and there, down a trench, working industriously, shipped to the waist, was the most beautiful man Hamish had ever seen. He stopped his work, put down the pick, scrambled nimbly out of the trench and stood looking at Hamish, his hands on his hips.
Peter Hynd was about five feet ten inches in height. His face and body were lightly tanned a golden brown. His figure was slim and well-muscled. He had golden hair which curled on his head like a cap. He had high cheek- bones and golden-brown eyes framed with thick lashes. His mouth was firm and well-shaped and his neck was the kind of neck that classical sculptors dream about.
“Hallo,” he said. “Is this visit official?”
“No,” said Hamish, “Just a friendly call.”
Peter smiled suddenly and Hamish blinked as though before a sudden burst of sunlight. That smile illuminated the young man’s face with a radiance. “You’d better come indoors,” said Peter, “and have something. Tea or coffee?”
“Coffee would be chust fine,” said Hamish, feeling suddenly shy.
Peter took a checked shirt off a nail on the fence and put it on. His accent was light, pleasant, upper-class but totally without drawl or affectation.
Hamish followed him into the house, ducking his head as he did so, for the doorway was low. The cottage was in the usual old–fashioned croft-house pattern, living-room with a fire for cooking on to one side and parlour to the other. Peter had transformed the living-room into a sort of temporary kitchen, with a counter along one side with shelves containing dishes, and pots and pans above it. In the centre of the room was a scrubbed kitchen table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Peter put a kettle on a camping stove at the edge of the table. “I used that old kettle on the chain over the fire when I first arrived,” he said with a grin, “but it took ages to boil. The peat around here doesn’t give out much heat. Milk and sugar?”
“Just black,” said Hamish, beginning to feel more at ease.
“I’m building a kitchen at the back,” said Peter, taking down two mugs.
“What are you doing in the garden?” asked Hamish.
