Death of a Dustman

“Be with you in a minute.”

Hamish washed and dressed. He went out of the station and then blinked at the mess of paper all over Lochdubh. Well, they could all clear it up later.

¦

Tom Stein groaned as his alarm clock went off. He covered the Highlands for the Glasgow Morning News. He had a sour mouth and a blinding hangover, and he remembered he was supposed to get over to Lochdubh and cover some dreary cleanup campaign thought up by that poisonous Fleming woman. He shaved and dressed and then drank two Alka Seltzers, wincing at the noise as the tablets fizzed in the water. In this modem age, he thought bitterly, Alka Seltzer should by now have invented a silent tablet.

He was a middle-aged man with a thin face marred by lines of disappointment. As an elderly actor will take part in yet another crowd scene and dream of glory, so Tom dreamed of having a scoop, having his name on the front of the London papers. But he suffered disappointment after disappointment. Hadn’t he sent the first reports of the murder in Lochdubh? But the Glasgow Morning News had sent up their own man, and anything he had written had been incorporated into the staff man’s story. Tom was a freelancer. He sometimes got a few items in the other papers, but only the Glasgow Morning News paid him a retainer.

He drank a cup of black coffee and shuddered. He certainly wasn’t going to hit the headlines with this one. There was a knock at the door of his little bungalow, situated in what had once been a respectable suburb of Strathbane but which was going rapidly downhill.

It was his photographer, an equally tired and perpetually disappointed man called Paul Anstruther.

“You ready to go?” asked Paul.

“May as well, but if they publish one line, I’ll shoot myself in surprise.”

¦

“Nothing,” said Jimmy in disgust. “But thanks to you, Hamish, we can charge him with intent to ruin the Tommel Castle. But, man, we cannae charge him with murder.”

A crowd had gathered to watch the police activity. Jimmy had actually arrived at six in the morning. It was now eight and Lochdubh was coming alive.

Josie Darling noticed Geordie Liddell standing at the edge of the crowd in full Highland regalia. She went up to him. “You off to the Games?”

“Yes,” said Geordie. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t know. Will you be tossing the caber?”

“Aye, and throwing the hammer.”

“Is the hammer very heavy?”

“Weighs a ton,” said Geordie. “I’ve got it in the Jeep. I’ll show you.”

He went to his Jeep and returned swinging the long, heavy, metal hammer. “Try lifting it, Josie.”

“I can’t.” She giggled. “My, but you’re strong!”

Geordie grinned and flexed his muscles under his green velvet jacket. Then he heard Hamish shouting, “I hear a helicopter.” The crowd fell silent.

¦

“It’s so damn early in the morning,” groaned Tom Stein as he and his photographer got into a minibus marked PRESS.

“Are we the only ones?” asked Paul Anstruther.

“Looks like it,” said Tom wearily. “That biddy Fleming is trying to plead with them to wait for more, but it’s just you and me.”

The cavalcade moved off. In the front limousine, Mrs. Freda Fleming was doggedly trying to look on the bright side. “I know that at the moment we only have the representatives from the Glasgow Morning News,” she said to the small figure of the provost, who was sitting next to her. “But mark my words, the others will be making their own way there.”

The provost, Mr. Jamie Ferguson, shifted uneasily. “It’s an awful lot of money we’ve been putting out on this. The Labour Party is cracking down on wasteful councils. They’ll have something to say about this.”

“It isn’t really costing anything,” said Mrs Fleming. “I mean, I sent the constable full instructions. Lochdubh will bear the expense of the celebrations.”

“If I know Lochdubh,” said the provost gloomily, “then they’ll send us a bill.”

“They can try,” snapped Mrs. Fleming. She rapped on the glass. “Go faster, driver, we’re running late.”

“I’m in trouble, Freda,” said the provost. “The other members of the council want rid of you.”

“They cannot sack me. I am an elected Labour representative.”

“Aye, but they want to give the job of environment officer to someone else.”

“That is ridiculous. To whom?”

“To Jessie Camber.”

“What? That blowsy blonde who goes around flashing her tits? Over my dead body.”

The provost sighed and settled down into an escapist dream in which the murderer of Lochdubh, who everyone knew was still at large, would murder Mrs. Freda Fleming. But the dream didn’t last very long and reality set in. What on earth had ever possessed him to spend a night with her? She would never let him forget it. He shuddered at the thought of his wife finding out. His wife was remarkably like Mrs. Fleming, being well-upholstered and domineering.

¦

In the press bus, the photographer, Paul, was saying to Tom, “The next time I’m sent on a job like this, I won’t even bother to put film in the camera.”

“Come on,” said Tom. “Something could happen.”

“You’re always saying that,” replied Paul. “You’ve been saying it for years.”

“Look, there’s been two murders in Lochdubh. Maybe we could find out a story.”

“Huh,” snorted Paul. But he checked his camera and, by force of habit, focused it out the window. A dismal- looking sheep stared back.

¦

The crowd on the waterfront at Lochdubh stared up at the helicopter. It came lower. They could clearly see Ionides sitting beside the pilot. The pilot pointed down.

“They’re getting away,” shouted Hamish as the helicopter rose and began to head out over the loch.

“Stand back!” yelled Geordie in a great voice.

He began to swing his long hammer. Round and round he went, faster and faster, the skirts of his kilt swinging out. Then he let go.

The hammer sailed up and towards the helicopter in a great arc. It was a throw that was to be talked about for years to come. The hammer sheered straight through two of the rotary blades on the helicopter.

The helicopter spiralled down over the loch. Hamish could see the sheer terror on Ionides’s face as the craft struck the black waters of Lochdubh. The pilot got his door open just before the helicopter struck the water, Ionides seemed trapped in his seat. The last they saw of him he was struggling frantically with the door as the water flooded in.

Hamish pulled off his navy blue police sweater and shirt and dragged off his trousers and unlaced his boots and dived into the loch.

Then Jimmy Anderson could see Hamish struggling with the pilot. “Help him,” he shouted to his men. But at that moment Hamish rose in the water and punched the pilot full on the chin and then dragged the unconscious body towards the shore, where five policemen ran down to help him.

“What about the other one?” panted Hamish.

“We’ll need to get the divers down,” said one.

“What’s going on?” shouted Tom as their minibus stopped on the waterfront. Paul darted out the bus with his camera. He pushed and elbowed his way through people in the crowd, who were staring up at a helicopter. Then he saw them back off as Geordie began to swing his hammer. He clicked and clicked. His heart beat with excitement. Then he took the picture that was to go right round the world as the hammer sailed through the rotary blades of the helicopter.

Behind him, Tom’s impeccable shorthand was flying across the pages of his notebook.