line, where about fifteen tough and fit-looking men were waiting. Hamish took up his position and waited with a dry mouth. “All the best, Hamish!” shouted some Lochdubhite and the rest of the village spectators began to cheer. He gave a limp wave and a weak smile.
They all crouched ready. Silence fell on the crowd. A curlew piped from the hillside. Then the starting pistol fired and they were off, Hamish set himself an easy pace, determined to do his best. He gained a good bit of advantage over the moorland, having run the course years before, knowing which treacherous bogs to avoid. Ben Loss was not a rock climber’s mountain. Family parties often climbed its heathery flanks to picnic on the top. But for men running flat out, it was a gruelling climb. Hamish could feel his bream getting ragged and hear his heart pounding against his ribs, and to each heartbeat a voice cried in his brain, “Failure, failure, failure.” And men, as he reached the summit and started the downward run, he saw the rest were ahead of him, with the powerful man he had earlier identified as Bill French, the water bailiff, leading the pack. All at once, he wanted to give up and sit down in the heather. His pace lagged. Then he decided to give it his best effort. He took a deep breath and prepared to run down that mountain and back across the moor as fast as he could. And then, just as he paused and stooped to retie the lace of one of his running shoes, there was the crack of a rifle from the heather over to his right and a bullet whizzed over his bent head. In a flash he realized that if he stopped any longer to find out who was firing at him, the marksman would take another shot at him. He set off, this time running for his life.
¦
“Here they come,” cried Archie, who had sharp eyes. Priscilla peered through a powerful pair of binoculars and then lowered them and said in a sad voice, “Hamish is nowhere in sight.”
“He never did any training, never any training,” said Jessie Currie. “He’s too lazy to run, and that’s a fact.”
The villagers gloomily watched the runners coming closer, with Bill French at their head.
Priscilla, worried now that Hamish might have collapsed, raised her binoculars to her eyes again.
And then she shouted to the villagers, who were turning away in disgust, “It’s Hamish! He’s coming! He’s catching up!”
Startled, they all turned back and stared across the moorland.
And sure enough, there came Hamish Macbeth, long red-haired legs pumping like pistons. They started to cheer, at first tentatively and then hysterically, as Hamish pounded on.
“My God,” said Ian Chisholm, “I haff neffer seen the like, and my money was on French!”
Hamish hurtled on. Bill French, hearing the cheering and cries of “Hamish,” turned round, stumbled and fell in the heather and Hamish cleared his body in one great leap and went flat out over the finishing line, where he fell on the grass with his hands over his head.
Priscilla rushed to him. “Well done, Hamish.”
“Shot,” he gasped. “Up the Loss. Someone tried to kill me.”
Priscilla gave a startled exclamation and ran towards the mobile police trailer. When she reported what Hamish had said and brought several policemen back with her, Hamish was sitting with his head in his hands. He quickly told the police what had happened. Soon police could be seen fanning up over the mountainside. Hamish, in a daze, accepted the prize money which, he was vaguely pleased to note, was in cash. A cheque would have disappeared into his overdraft. He then went over to the police trailer and led a second party up the mountain to show them where he had been shot at. But there was no evidence of anything, no spent cartridge cases, no sign anyone had been there, although there was such an expanse to cover, he knew they could well have missed something.
“Probably imagined it, Macbeth,” said Sergeant Macgregor from Cnothan.
“I didn’t,” said Hamish stubbornly. “And I think it’s tied up with the murder of Randy Duggan. Someone knows I don’t believe Beck did it and someone wants me out of the way.”
“Well, we cannae dae any mair but put in a report,” said Sergeant Macgregor sourly, thinking of the paperwork and what Strathbane would say about all these policemen charging overtime looking for a supposed murderer. Hamish arrived back at the police station at ten that night. The phone in the office was shrilling away and he was tempted not to answer it. At last he reluctantly picked it up. Blair’s voice snarled down the line. “Look here, pillock, stop trying to screw up my nicely solved case by wasting police time saying someone’s trying to murder you because you know better than me.”
“I don’t think Beck murdered Duggan,” said Hamish wearily.
“Well, it’s time you did. In fact, I did you a favour. I told Daviot your poor auld brain is a wee bit strained these days and you need a break. Take a week off, he says. I say, do it.”
Hamish opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Here was a perfect chance to go to Glasgow. He had the money and now he had the time.
“All right,” he said meekly.
“Tell Macgregor over in Cnothan to cover for ye,” said Blair, and rang off.
Hamish dialled Sergeant Macgregor’s number. “Oh, the hell with it,” said Macgregor when he heard Hamish’s request. “I don’t know why they bother keeping you on the force, and that’s a fact.”
“Anything up?” asked Hamish, hearing an odd note in the sergeant’s voice.
Macgregor looked moodily at the shiny surface of his desk, where a single rifle bullet lay. A small boy had picked it up out of the heather at the top of Ben Loss, just where Hamish Macbeth had said he was shot at, and had brought it to Cnothan police station ten minutes before Hamish’s call. But if he told Macbeth, then it would mean more paperwork. And anyway, it was probably from a deer rifle and had been lying there for ages. Besides, Blair had let him know forcibly that he considered the murder case of Randy Duggan solved and closed.
Macgregor picked up the bullet and then tossed it into the waste-basket. “Nothing’s up,” he said. “Good night to you.”
Hamish wearily ran a hot bath, stripped and climbed into it and promptly fell asleep, waking to find the water stone cold.
Cursing, he climbed out, aching in every bone, and towelled himself down. He went through to bed. The last thing he heard before he fell asleep again was a rhythmic pattering on the window.
Rain had returned to Lochdubh.
¦
He awoke the following morning, thinking that he should pack up and head south to Glasgow. But there was something nagging at the back of his brain. And why go to Glasgow when the murderer was surely still around Lochdubh? And yet, in Randy’s background lay the vital clue to the identity of the murderer. Then the fact that had been niggling away at him suddenly sprang into his brain and he cursed himself for a fool. Blair had said that Rosie Draly had been married and divorced ten years before. Yet Mrs. Beck had given the impression that her sister had never married. Bob Beck had said nothing about any husband. He scampered through to the police office in his pyjamas and dialled Mrs. Beck’s number. With any luck she would be back in London and not yet at work.
Mrs. Beck’s sharp voice answered the phone. “This is Police Constable Hamish Macbeth in Lochdubh,” began Hamish.
“Why don’t you stop persecuting me?” said Mrs. Beck. “Haven’t I suffered enough? My husband a double murderer! I’m afraid to face the neighbours.”
“It’s just one wee thing,” said Hamish soothingly. “Your sister was married?”
“That wasn’t a marriage!”
“Well, was she married, or wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Who to? When? Where?”
“Let me see, it would be in nineteen eighty-five. I didn’t go to the wedding. It was in Inverness.”
Hamish said patiently, although he felt like shouting at her, “What was the name of the man she married?”
“It was a Henry Beale. He was a journalist on the Inverness Dotty.”
“And when were they divorced?”
“He filed for divorce two days after the wedding.” Her voice was full of bitter satisfaction. “That’s why I never think of Rosie having been married.”
“Have you an address for him?”
“Wait a bit.”
