Death of a Witch (2 page)

“No one!” Her voice was shrill. “I’m clumsy. This is my day off. You’ve no right . . .”

“They beat you up for information, didn’t they?” said Hamish. “Do you know them, or did they just pick on you?”

She began to cry. Great sobs racked her body. Hamish waited patiently. He felt that if he comforted her, she might take it as a sign of weakness.

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. It had been given to him by one of his admirers at the Spanish hotel who had even embroidered his initials in one corner.

At last she wiped her eyes and looked at him bleakly. “I’m finished with the force.”

“Let’s hear it,” said Hamish.

In a flat tired voice she told him what had happened. She had been out clubbing in Strathbane and had got picked up by a man, George MacDuff. They had gone out for a bit and the one evening he had come round with two friends, Hugh Sutherland and Andy Burnside. George had said the police were staking out post offices and they wanted her to tell them which ones. She refused. George got nasty. They tied her to a chair and stripped off her blouse and began to burn her with cigarettes. She said she was terrified and told them she would find out for them.

“You had their names and descriptions,” said Hamish. “Why didn’t you just report them?”

“George knows where my mother lives in Bonar Bridge. He said if I told anyone, they would kill her.”

“Lassie, the police could have put your mother under protection.”

“With Blair in charge?”

“Oh, well, maybe you have a point. What’s the next job?”

“They came round today. I said I wouldn’t tell them anything more and they beat me. I still wouldn’t tell them but they hurt me so much, I told them that the post offices were no longer under surveillance. George said something like ‘Leave her.’ Then as they went out, I heard one of the others say, ‘Braikie tomorrow’ll be our last anyway.’ I’d better get my coat. You’ll be taking me in.”

“Let me think.” Hamish ran his long fingers through his flaming red hair. “Who’s your doctor?”

“Dr. Sing.”

“Sympathetic?”

“He seemed like a nice man. I only saw him the once when I had a sprained ankle.”

“Get me his number.”

Supplied with the phone number, Hamish phoned Dr. Sing and asked him to call, adding that it was a police matter.

“What are you going to do?” asked Alice.

“Try to get you out of this.”

When Dr. Sing arrived, Hamish said, “Miss Donaldson has been beaten up during some undercover work. We fear this might be because of some informant at headquarters. Until we investigate further, we want you to sign her off for two weeks suffering from injuries incurred after a bad fall down the stairs. You would be helping an investigation considerably if you could do this.”

Dr. Sing was a young doctor, recently qualified and anxious to please. He wrote out the certificate and would have examined Alice but Hamish said a police doctor had already had a look. “But the certificate has to be issued by her own doctor,” said Hamish.

When the doctor had left, Hamish said, “Get over to your mother in Bonar Bridge and get her off to a wee hotel somewhere until this blows over. Now, if these men are caught and your name comes up, don’t say I had anything to do with it or we’ll both be out of the force.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” said Alice.

“Just move fast and get out of here,” said Hamish. “Have you got a car?” She nodded. “Pack quickly and off you go!”

Hamish stopped on the road back to Lochdubh and bought three fish suppers to feed his pets and himself, wondering all the time how to catch the men who proposed robbing the Braikie Post Office. They were getting bolder, he thought. The others had mainly been sub post offices in general stores, but Braikie was a pedigree one and quite new. No one could understand how Braikie, a remote highland town, should get a new post office when the government was proposing to close so many down.

Twice Hamish had been promoted to sergeant and twice he had been demoted. During the two periods he had held the rank of sergeant, he had policemen working under him. One was Willie Lamont, who had married the daughter of an Italian restaurant owner and left to work in the restaurant. The other, Clarry Graham, was now employed as a chef at the Tommel Castle Hotel. He decided to get them to help him. If he got a squad from Strathbane, they would insist on knowing how he got the information about the proposed robbery. Or Blair might take over and make a mess of it.

Hamish had a sudden image of Blair being blasted to death by a shotgun and he smiled. It was great that some of the things inside his head never got to the outside, he thought.

In the morning, Hamish, flanked by Clarry and Willie, broke the news to the alarmed postmistress, Ellie Macpherson, that he expected the place to be raided. Unfortunately for Hamish, Ellie was the leading light of the local dramatic society and also a sort of female Walter Mitty. He had managed to talk to her just before she opened up in the morning. Ellie, a scrawny woman who jangled with cheap jewellery, drew herself up and said, “I shall throw myself on the guns!” Her eyes were half closed. Hamish repressed a sigh. He guessed Ellie was already seeing herself on the front page of some newspaper.

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” snapped Hamish. “You’ll lie down behind your counter as soon as they come in. Now, Willie and Clarry here will be in the post office, looking at cards or something. They’ve got their shotguns and if anyone asks, they’ll say they are going out hunting rabbits up on the braes.”

The day dragged on. Hamish, hidden in the back shop, yawned and fidgeted. Willie and Clarry, tired of reading the rhymes of the greeting cards to each other, yawned as well with boredom.

Just when Hamish was beginning to fear that the robbers planned to attack somewhere else, the door of the post office was thrown open. He heard the customers scream and a man’s voice say, “Hand over the money or you’ll get shot.”

Hamish darted out of the back shop, holding his own shotgun. He trod on the prone figure of Ellie, who screamed.

Willie was holding his shotgun against the neck of the one armed man who had dropped his gun to the floor, and Clarry was covering the other two. Hamish leapt over the counter and, taking out three sets of handcuffs, arrested and cautioned the robbers.

Blair was furious when he got the news. “Whit was that loon daein’ playing the lone sheriff?” he said to Chief Superintendent Peter Daviot.

“Now, now,” said Daviot. “Hamish has got these men and I am not going to quibble about the way he did it.”

Jimmy Anderson waylaid Hamish as he was on his way out of headquarters after typing up a full report.

“So was Alice the informant?” he asked.

“No, nothing to do with it. Chust a lucky guess on my part.”

“She’s not in today.”

“Och, the lassie had a bad fall. I called her doctor and he told her to take a couple of weeks off.”

“Aye, right,” said Jimmy cynically.

“Come over to Lochdubh one evening,” said Hamish. “Don’t forget, I’ve a bottle for you.”

Hamish was just sitting down wearily to an evening meal of Scotch pie and peas when someone knocked at the door.

“Come in,” he shouted. “The door’s open.”

Alice walked in. “I heard about it on the evening news,” she said. “Did they say anything about me?”

“No, I’d have heard. They’re not going to confess to beating someone up for information. They’ll all be sent away for a long time. You can get drunk and run someone over in your car and get a suspended sentence, but if you steal money then the full weight of the courts comes down on your head. Sit down. I hope you’ve eaten, because this is all I’ve got.”

“Yes, I did have something earlier. So I can move back home?”

“Certainly. None of that lot will be getting out on bail.”

She sat down with a sigh. “I’m going to hand in my resignation.”

“Why?”

“I’m just not cut out for the force. It’s not really because of the beating. I don’t have much courage. I’m going back to university to get a degree and then maybe I’ll teach.”

“If that’s what you want to do . . .”

“But we can see each other sometimes?”

“Maybe. I do haff the girlfriend, you know.”

“Oh, well, I’d better be on my way.”

Hamish saw her out, finished his meal, undressed, showered, and went to bed, stretching out with a groan of relief. There were two thumps and the cat and dog got into bed with him.

A gale was howling outside, wailing round the building like a banshee. Before he plunged into sleep, Hamish found he was experiencing a stab of superstitious dread. Must be that pie, was his last waking thought.

The morning was glittering with yellow sunlight. Wisps of high cloud raced across a washed-out blue sky, and the waters of the loch were churned up into angry choppy waves.

Hamish put on his uniform of serge trousers, blue shirt, dark blue tie, and police sweater with epaulettes. He put his peaked cap on his red hair. He noticed that his trousers were baggy at the knees.

He unlocked the large cat flap, big enough to let the dog in and out as well, and said to his pets, “You stay here. I’ve got a visit to make.”

The wind sang in the heather as he made his way on foot to Sandy Ross’s old cottage. Who was this Catriona Beldame that even the Currie sisters wouldn’t gossip about?

He sensed someone behind him and swung round. The seer, Angus Macdonald, his long grey beard blowing in the wind, was shouting something, but his words were whipped away with the gale.

Hamish waited until Angus caught up with him. “Dinnae go there, Hamish?” panted the seer.

“Why not,” said Hamish, rocking slightly in the force of the wind and holding on to his peaked cap.

“Because she’s a witch, that’s why,” said Angus. “She’s brought evil to Lochdubh.”

“Havers,” said Hamish. “What’s she doing? Setting up in competition?”

“I’m warning ye, Hamish. Black days are coming. I see blood.”

“Och, away wi’ ye,” said Hamish. “There’s no such thing as witches.”

“On your ain head be it,” said Angus and turned away.

Hamish walked on, hoping that old Angus wasn’t beginning to suffer from the onset of Alzheimer’s.

The cottage had no garden. The springy heather went right up to the door. It was a low one-storey whitewashed building with a red corrugated iron roof.

As he approached the door, a large black cloud swept across the sun and all at once the wind died.

Again Hamish felt that odd stab of superstitious dread. Then the wind started up again and the cloud moved from the sun.

Hamish raised his hand to the weather-beaten knocker on the door.

Chapter Two

La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!

—John Keats

The woman who answered the door fit the description Angela had given him. And yet, as she stood there, looking at him enquiringly, Hamish decided there was nothing sinister about her. She had a dab of flour on one cheek and she was wearing an old Aran sweater, dusty blue corduroy trousers, and sneakers.

“I am the local constable,” said Hamish. “I have been away on holiday and have only just heard of your arrival.”

“Come in,” she said.

The kitchen-
cum
-living-room into which she led him was stone-flagged. A peat fire smouldered on the hearth. Bookshelves lined one wall and on another, on either side of the low door, shelves held a variety of glass bottles. In the centre of the room was a scarred oak table surrounded by six high-backed Orkney chairs.

The kitchen part consisted of a sink and butane gas cooker, a granite top with pine cupboards above and below. There was neither a fridge nor a dishwasher.

“Please sit down,” she said. Her voice was low and mellow with only a slight trace of highland accent.

Hamish sat down at the table and removed his cap. Despite the fire, the room was cold and the wind soughed through the heather outside the house with an urgent whispering sound.

“What brought you to this part?” asked Hamish.

“It’s a pretty village,” she said. “Would you like some tea?”

“I’d prefer coffee.”

“I only have herbal tea. Good for you.”

“All right,” said Hamish. “Although I find that things that are said to be good for me are not very appealing.”

She smiled an enchanting smile that lit up her face. “Oh, you’ll like this.”

“Where did you come from?” asked Hamish as she busied herself at the counter by putting a kettle on the cooker.

“Oh, here and there.”

“And where was the last there?”

“Dear me. You do go on like a policeman. So many questions!”

“What do you do for a living?” pursued Hamish.

“I supply therapy and herbal treatments.”

“Have many of the villagers visited you? I believe quite a few men have called on you.”

“I have a good treatment for sexual dysfunction. Want some?”

“I do not haff the trouble in that department,” said Hamish, blushing. “What exactly is this treatment?”

“A secret recipe.”

Hamish said stiffly, “We do not go in for sex much in Lochdubh,” and immediately felt silly as she turned round and looked at him with amusement.

She put a cup of tea in front of him and said, “Now, try that.”

Hamish took a cautious sip. It was some sort of fruit tea, he guessed, very pleasant to the taste.

She sat down at the table close to him and raised her own cup to her lips. Catriona looked at him over the rim and smiled.

“Tell me about your sex life.”

“Chust keep your nose out o’ my private life,” said Hamish sharply.

“But you’ve been asking me so many personal questions. Isn’t it fair I should ask you some?”

“I didnae ask you about your sex life.”

Her knee pressed against his under the table.

“I don’t mind. For example, I’m very good in bed.”

“Are you running a brothel here?” demanded Hamish.

She threw back her head and laughed. Then she said, “My dear man, if I wanted to run a brothel, I would hardly settle in a village in the north of Scotland. Let’s not quarrel.” She covered his hand with her own. “I simply supply a few herbal medicines. I was teasing you. The main complaint here is indigestion.”