A Highland Christmas (11 page)

‘He’s coming, boys!’ shouted Hamish.

They scattered out of the police station while Hamish changed into his uniform.

Blair crouched forward in the helicopter. ‘Can ye see any lights?’ he roared at the pilot.

‘Nothing but a few house lights!’ the pilot shouted back.

Blair was sobering up rapidly and a little worm of fear began to gnaw his stomach.

‘Set down on the front!’ he yelled.

The pilot landed next to the Chisholms’ bus. Blair climbed down and ducked under the still rotating blades. He glared up and down the waterfront. Not one single Christmas light winked back
at him.

He marched to the police station and walked right in. Hamish, neat in his uniform, was sitting at the desk in the police station typing something on the computer.

‘Where are those lights?’ demanded Blair.

‘The Cnothan lights?’ said Hamish innocently. ‘Look about ye, sir. Boxes and boxes of them.’

Blair ripped open one of the boxes and glared down at the neatly packed lights. ‘I’ll need to put in a report about that box,’ said Hamish. ‘You’re destroying the
evidence.’

‘Look, here, Macbeth, I had a report you had thae lights strung up all over the village.’

Hamish looked suitably amazed. ‘Now who would go saying a thing like that?’

Blair stamped out. He went from house to house, demanding to know if anyone had seen any lights, but all shook their heads.

Beside himself with worry and rage, he went back to the police station. Hamish held out the phone. ‘You’re just in time. Superintendent Daviot is on the line.’

‘What the hell are you about taking out the helicopter?’ roared Daviot. Blair opened his mouth to lie, to say he had heard of a crack house in Lochdubh, anything, but Daviot was
going on. ‘It’s all round Strathbane that you heard Macbeth had put up Christmas lights from that robbery all over his village. Well, did he?’

‘There’s nothing here, sir. But you see –’

‘Listen to this. The pilot will be charging double because it’s Christmas and I think the cost should come out of your wages. Return here immediately!’

Blair put down the phone. He walked to the door of the police office. ‘I’ll have you yet, Macbeth,’ he threatened. Then he looked down with a comical look of pure outrage. Lugs
was peeing into his shoe.

He raised his foot to kick the dog but it scampered under Hamish’s desk and lay on his boots.

Blair squelched out.

‘Come out of there,’ said Hamish to the dog. ‘Do you know something, Lugs? I’m going to keep you after all.

‘Merry Christmas, you lovely wee dog. It’s turned out the best Christmas yet!’

If you enjoyed
A Highland Christmas,
read on for the first chapter of the next book in the
Hamish Macbeth
series . . .

T
hey are still called dustmen in Britain. Not rubbish collectors or sanitation engineers. Just dustmen, as they were called in the days of George
Bernard Shaw’s
Pygmalion
and Charles Dickens’s
Our Mutual Friend.

Lochdubh’s dustman, Fergus Macleod, lived in a small run-down cottage at the back of the village with his wife, Martha, and four children. He was a sour little man, given to drunken
binges, but as he timed his binges to fall between collection days, nobody paid him much attention. It was rumoured he had once been an accountant before he took to the drink. No one in the quiet
Highland village in the county of Sutherland at the very north of Scotland could ever have imagined he was a sleeping monster, and one that was shortly about to wake up.

Mrs Freda Fleming had recently bullied her way on to Strathbane Council to become Officer for the Environment. This had been a position created for her to shut her up and keep
her out of other council business. She was the only woman on the council. Her position in the chauvinist Highlands was due to the fact that the ambitious widow had seduced the provost – the
Scottish equivalent of mayor – after a Burns Supper during which the normally rabbity little provost, Mr Jamie Ferguson, had drunk too much whisky.

Mrs Fleming nursed a private dream and that was to see herself on television. Her mirror showed a reflection of a well-upholstered woman of middle years with gold-tinted hair and a pugnacious
face. Mrs Fleming saw in her glass someone several inches slimmer and with dazzling charisma. Her husband had died three years previously. He had been a prominent businessman in the community,
running an electronics factory in Strathbane. His death from a heart attack had left Mrs Fleming a very wealthy widow, with burning ambition and time on her hands. At first she had accepted the
post of Officer for the Environment with bad grace but had recently woken to the fact that Green was in – definitely in.

She figured if she could think up some grand scheme to improve the environment, the cameras would roll. She firmly believed she was born to be a television star. Strathbane was much in need of
improvement. It was a blot on the Highlands, a sprawling town full of high rises, crime, unemployment and general filth. But it was too huge a task and not at all photogenic. She aimed for national
television, and national television would go for something photogenic and typically Highland. Then she remembered Lochdubh, which she had visited once on a sunny day. She would ‘green’
Lochdubh.

One hot summer’s morning, she arrived in Lochdubh. The first thing she saw was smelly bags of rubbish lined up outside the church hall. This would not do. She swung round
and glared along the waterfront. Her eye fell on the blue lamp of a police station, partly obscured by the rambling roses which tumbled over the station door.

She strode towards it and looked over the hedge. Hamish Macbeth, recently promoted to police sergeant, was playing in the garden with his dog, Lugs.

‘Ahem!’ said Mrs Fleming severely. ‘Where is the constable?’

Hamish was not in uniform. He was wearing an old checked shirt and baggy cords. The sun shone down on his flaming red hair and pleasant face.

He smiled at her. ‘I am Sergeant Macbeth. Can I help you?’

‘What has happened to Lochdubb?’ she demanded.

‘Lochdubh,’ corrected Hamish gently. ‘It’s pronounced Lochdoo.’

‘Whatever.’ Mrs Fleming did not like to be corrected. ‘Why is all that smelly rubbish outside the church hall?’

‘We had a fête to raise money for charity,’ said Hamish. ‘Who are you?’

‘I am Mrs Freda Fleming, Officer for the Environment in Strathbane.’

‘Well, Mrs Fleming, like I was saying, it’s because of the fête, all that rubbish.’

‘So why hasn’t it been collected?’

‘Fergus Macleod, that’s the dustman, doesn’t collect anything outside collection day. That’s not for a couple of days’ time.’

‘We’ll see about that. Where does he live?’

‘If you go to Patel’s, the general store, and go up the lane at the side, you’ll find four cottages along the road at the back. It’s the last one.’

‘And why aren’t you in uniform?’

‘Day off,’ said Hamish, hoping she wouldn’t check up.

‘Very well. You will be seeing more of me. I plan to green Lochdubh.’ With that, she strode off along the waterfront, leaving Hamish scratching his fiery hair in bewilderment. What
on earth could she have meant? Perhaps trees or maybe gardens?

But he had enough problems to fill his brain without worrying about Mrs Fleming’s plans. Behind him and, he hoped, manning the police office was his new constable, Clarry Graham. Clarry
was a lazy slob. He had never progressed from the ranks. He rarely washed and slopped around in a shiny old uniform.

Then there was the problem of the new hotel. The Lochdubh Hotel at the harbour had stood vacant for some years. It had recently been bought by a Greek entrepreneur, George Ionides. This meant
work for the villagers and Hamish was glad of that, but on the other hand he was aware that a new hotel would take custom away from the Tommel Castle Hotel, run by Colonel Halburton-Smythe, whose
glamorous daughter, Priscilla, had once been the love of his life.

He went into the police station followed by Lugs.
Lugs
is the Scottish for ‘ears’, and he had called the dog that because of its large ears. In the police station, the fat
figure of Clarry was snoring gently behind the desk.

I should wake him up, thought Hamish, but what for? It’s as quiet as the grave these days. Clarry had strands of grey hair plastered across his pink scalp and a large grey moustache which
rose and fell with every somnolent breath. He had a round pink face, like that of a prematurely aged baby. His chubby hands were folded across his stomach. The only thing in his favour was that he
was a good cook and no one could call him mean. Most of his salary went on food – food which he was delighted to cook for Hamish as well as himself.

Oh, well, thought Hamish, closing the office door gently. I could have got someone worse.

Fergus was in the middle of one of his binges, and had he been at home Mrs Fleming would have seen to it that he lost his job. But Fergus was lying up in the heather on the
moors, sleeping off his latest binge, so it was his wife, Martha, who answered the door. Martha had once been a pretty girl, but marriage, four children and multiple beatings had left her looking
tired and faded. Her once thick black hair was streaked with grey and her eyes held a haunted look.

Mrs Fleming questioned her closely about her husband and fear prompted Martha to protect the horrible Fergus, for what would they live on if he lost his job? She said he was a hard worker, and
the reason he collected the rubbish only once a week was because he had one of those old-fashioned trucks where everything had to be manually lifted into it by hand. Mrs Fleming was pleased by
Martha’s timid, deferential air. She gave Martha her card and said that Fergus was to report to the council offices at eleven the following morning. ‘We must see about getting him a new
truck,’ she said graciously. ‘I have plans for Lochdubh.’

After she had gone, Martha told her eldest, Johnny, to take care of the younger ones, and she then set out to look for her husband. By evening, she had almost given up and was leaning wearily
over the hump-backed bridge over the River Anstey

She found herself hoping that he was dead. That would be different from him losing his job. She could get her widow’s pension, and when the third child, Sean, was of school age, she could
maybe work a shift at the new hotel if she could get someone to look after the baby. Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, had challenged her with the unsympathetic, ‘You must have known
he was a drunk when you married him,’ but she had not. Certainly he seemed to like his dram like a lot of Highlanders. She had met him at a wedding in Inverness. He had said he was an
accountant and working over at Dingwall. He had courted her assiduously. It was only after they were married and he had moved into the cottage she had inherited from her parents that it transpired
he had no job and was a chronic drunk. It also transpired he really had been an accountant, but he had seemed to take a savage delight in becoming the village dustman. Then she sensed, rather than
saw, his approach.

She swung round, her back to the parapet of the bridge. He came shambling towards her with that half-apologetic leer on his face that he always had when he had sobered up between binges.

‘Looking for me?’

‘Aye, a woman from the council in Strathbane called. Wants to see you in Strathbane on the morrow.’

‘Whit about?’

‘Didnae say. She left her card.’

‘You should’ve asked.’ Fergus had become wizened with drink, although only in his mid-forties. He had a large nose and watery eyes and a small prissy mouth. He had rounded
shoulders and long arms, as if all the lifting of dustbins had elongated them. It was hard for Martha to think that she had loved him once.

‘I’d better go and see her,’ grumbled Fergus.

Martha shivered although the evening was balmy and warm. She had a feeling the bad times were coming. Then she chided herself for her fancies. How could the bad times come when they were already
here?

Clarry slid a plate of steaming bouillabaisse in front of Hamish Macbeth. ‘Try that, sir,’ he ordered. ‘Nobody can make the bouillabaisse like
Clarry.’

‘Aye, you’re a grand cook, Clarry,’ said Hamish, thinking he would settle for fish fingers and frozen chips if only Clarry would turn out to be a good policeman instead.

But the fish stew was delicious. ‘Did you ever think of going into the restaurant business?’ asked Hamish. ‘A genius like you shouldnae be wasting your talents in the police
force. The Tommel Castle Hotel could do with a good chef.’

‘It’s not the same,’ said Clarry. ‘You go to them grand hotels and they would want ye to cut corners, skimp on the ingredients to save money.’ He ate happily.

‘There was a woman here from the council in Strathbane. Wanted to see Fergus.’