by Gwen Moffat
Beatrice came and stood beside her. ‘I’m here too, Campbell: Miss Swan. Are you drunk?’
‘No, Miss Swan. I’m glad you’re there; I want to see you too.’
Beatrice pushed past Miss Pink and opened the door. Campbell entered wide-eyed, removing his cap. ‘They set my place afire,’ he said.
They turned away from him. ‘Sit down, Campbell,’ Miss Pink said comfortably. ‘You’ll take a whisky?’ She bit her lip to keep from smiling. To have offered him brandy would have seemed like a slavish imitation of last night.
‘I can’t stop,’ he said, ‘but I’ll take a dram.’
Beatrice was watching him. ‘Is the fire bad?’
He nodded. ‘They’ve finished the place this time. Thank God no one was inside.’
‘It’s Lady MacKay’s property.’ It was a gentle rebuke.
‘She says it’s insured. Miss Swan, let me have one of the guns.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I need protection. I can smell petrol at that place. They would have thought I was inside. When they know I didn’t die in the fire, they’ll come after me.’
‘No, Campbell; I’m not lending you a gun.’
‘Miss, I got to have protection!’ His voice was rising.
‘Campbell!’ Miss Pink spoke loudly. ‘Why did they set fire to your house two nights running? You were here only last night.’
‘That’s right, I was.’ He seemed surprised. ‘This is different. I know why this happened. I’ll tell you. I should have told you first, but I was shocked. It’s not nice to come home and see your place blazing.’
‘You’ve called the fire brigade?’
He gave a snort of derision. ‘Fire brigade’s in Morvern! But if it was here, in Sgoradale, it wouldn’t be no good. The place is destroyed, and all my belongings. Hell, who cares? I’m worried about my life now. What happened? I come back from Miss Swan’s this afternoon and I find them in my house, one of them anyway; maybe the other got out when they heard the sound of the van. Last one couldn’t get out because I’ve nailed up the back door, so the only way out is the front door, see? And they’d forced that. The crowbar they’d used was there on the step—taken from my own barn. So I knew the place had been broke into—again, but I never thought anyone was still there. He must have been hiding in the lounge. I went in the kitchen and he hit me from behind. Knocked me down, but didn’t make me unconscious. When I picked myself up he was away. I run outside and he’s streaking for the trees like a deer. I couldn’t have caught him; he was much too fast.’
‘Who was he?’ Beatrice asked.
‘He was wearing a hood. And jeans and a dark anorak.’
‘But the place wasn’t on fire then,’ Miss Pink said.
‘No, not then. I hung around waiting for him to come back but he didn’t, so I went down the bar. The men there told me to fingerprint the place. I’d do that anyway; he hadn’t been wearing gloves. I stayed in the bar too long. When I went home again the place was afire. He’d come back to destroy his prints.’
Beatrice sighed and Miss Pink said, ‘Are you saying he slipped out of the bar, set the place on fire and came back?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. It’s possible, but I shouldn’t think it’s likely. I’d have noticed he’d gone away. No, what happened was when I was chasing him earlier, when he ran out of the cottage and I saw him making for the trees, I shouted after him, “I’ve got you now: you left your prints.” He had to have come back when I was down the bar. Now, Miss Swan, will you let me have a gun? Doesn’t have to be a rifle. Shotgun will do.’
‘No, Campbell. Now you go home—’
‘You weren’t listening! I got no home! It’s been burned—’
‘Campbell!’ Again Miss Pink tried to stem the flood. ‘What was he doing in your place the first time, before he set it on fire?’
He shrugged angrily. ‘I don’t know. Looking for something. The place had been burglarised: all the drawers pulled out, books on the floor. Doesn’t matter about that; they’re after me now. I’m not sleeping in this village tonight. I’m a marked man. I’m getting out now.’ And he went, closing the door quietly. They sat looking at each other.
‘He hasn’t taken his van,’ Miss Pink said.
Beatrice pointed to the window. ‘Listening,’ she mouthed.
‘It’s a very strange story,’ Miss Pink said loudly.
‘I’m going to telephone Knox.’ Beatrice went to the telephone and held a one-sided conversation with a non-existent police station. She replaced the receiver. ‘He’s on his way,’ she said.
After a few moments they opened the front door. Campbell’s van stood there, lit by the street lamp.
‘He’s not in it,’ Beatrice said.
Miss Pink found a torch and shone it inside the van. ‘Just another move in the game,’ she said in exasperation.
‘Oh, God!’ Beatrice breathed. ‘Look!’ Her fingers dug into Miss Pink’s arm.
There was a glow above the Lamentation Road and the rocks of the escarpment leapt and faded in a pink light against which the trees were clearly silhouetted. Smoke billowed and rolled upwards. Golden sparks flew like fireflies.
Then they did ring Knox.
CHAPTER SEVEN
People converged on the burning cottage. Gordon Knox was followed by Miss Pink and Beatrice. They left the Renault in the car park; the fire brigade would need a clear run to the cottage—although by the time it arrived there would be little left to do but damp down the embers. When they walked up the short track, they saw that already the roof had fallen in and only a few rafters were left flaming against the smoke. The fire still raged inside the walls: a glimpse of hell through the angular voids which had been windows and a front door.
‘I’m relieved that no one was inside,’ Miss Pink observed, ‘but it’s still sad to think of the lives that were lived out here: people who loved the place and were happy in it. As if the ghosts had lost their home.’
‘He wasn’t happy,’ Beatrice said. ‘That’s why he burned it.’
‘He must have been happy here in the early days, and with a young family. All the more reason for destroying it—to emphasise his present misery. He swings to extremes.’
Beatrice turned away. ‘It’s unbearable, like suicide. Where do you think he is now?’
‘I’ve no idea. Here’s Knox. Where have you been, Mr Knox?’
He was in gumboots and anorak, and he carried a heavy torch. ‘I was in the barn. There’s a stink of petrol but no sign of fire in there. The man’s mad. I don’t know what Lady Coline’s going to say. This could be her now.’
Two sets of headlights were approaching through the trees, diminished by the glare. When they stopped people came stumbling forward, bobbing in front of the lamps until the firelight revealed them as a group of men—some a little unsteady on their feet.
‘Customers from the bar,’ Knox said drily.
The newcomers pushed forward, Duncan Millar and Sinclair, the apiarist, in front. The old men regarded the burning cottage in silence, while from behind them came a murmur ranging from incredulity to grim humour. That last would be the younger men, Miss Pink thought.
‘Has anyone seen Campbell?’ Knox asked.
‘He can’t be inside!’ someone said.
‘No, there’s no one inside. Campbell’s been in the village since it started.’
‘He’s been—’ There was a swift movement in the gloom and the words were choked off.
‘He was in the bar,’ Duncan Millar said firmly.
‘What time?’ asked Knox. ‘What time did he come in?’
‘Seven, maybe.’
‘Nearer seven-thirty,’ Sinclair said.
‘What time did he leave?’
The old men looked at each other. ‘Nine?’ Sinclair suggested. ‘Round about then.’
‘It was nine o’clock when he called on us,’ Miss Pink said. They had told Knox on the telephone that they’d seen Campbell since the fire was started,
but had had no time to tell him more, except that they didn’t know the man’s present whereabouts. ‘He said the place was on fire then,’ she reminded him.
‘You phoned me at nine-forty, ma’am!’
‘We didn’t believe him,’ Beatrice said, and the men muttered amongst themselves; they wouldn’t have believed him either.
‘Didn’t he give any hint as to where he was going?’ Knox asked wearily.
‘No.’ While Miss Pink was considering whether to add that Campbell had said he wouldn’t sleep in the village, she saw more lights approaching. She decided to say nothing at this point and then realised from her silence that Beatrice had come to the same decision.
The new arrivals were Coline and Ranald. The men made way for them. Ranald was vociferously appalled, Coline mutely horrified. When Knox assured them that no one had been inside the cottage they were bewildered for a moment, trying to adjust to the mere destruction of property rather than loss of life.
‘Well,’ Coline breathed. ‘Thank God for that!’
‘Definitely,’ echoed Ranald. ‘Quite. Only bricks and mortar, what?’
Coline turned her back on the customers from the bar and addressed Miss Pink quietly. ‘Where is he?’
‘No one knows. He visited us, said the place was on fire, and we didn’t believe him. Then he vanished.’
‘And he said other people were responsible for the fire, of course.’
‘He did.’
‘I wonder—’ Coline began, to be interrupted by Anne Wallace who had arrived unnoticed and pushed through the crowd of men. ‘Is anyone hurt?’ she asked urgently.
‘Oh, Anne!’ Coline greeted her with a kind of relief. ‘He’s done it again. You see! No, no, there’s no one inside. We’ve talked on the phone,’ she explained to Miss Pink. ‘It’s out of our hands now, Anne,’ she said meaningly. ‘This is a crime, isn’t it, Knox?’ She lowered her voice further, addressing the women. ‘I shall use blackmail: we won’t bring a charge provided he submits himself for treatment. How would that be?’
‘I can’t think of anything better at the moment,’ Beatrice said. ‘But no one’s at their best for making an objective assessment. I shall go home now. I’m very sorry about your little house, Coline, my dear.’
‘Thank you. I suppose we shall rebuild with the insurance money, so we’ll be better off in the long run. All these old places are damp.’
***
As Miss Pink and Beatrice reached the street, an unearthly wail rent the night. Miss Pink switched off the engine and opened her door.
‘It’s the fire engine,’ she said. ‘They must be trying to move the sheep off the road. As Campbell said, a fire brigade fifteen miles away is no use in an emergency.’
They got out of the car and stood on the turf looking down the loch.
‘Where do you think he went?’ Miss Pink asked.
‘A bothy back on the moors perhaps, or the woods …’
‘What on earth’s happened?’ Esme had come silently across the grass from her house. ‘I heard a siren. Is someone hurt?’
Beatrice gave her the gist of the night’s happenings.
‘So where is he now?’ Esme asked. ‘His van’s still here; he can’t go far without transport.’ The van was where he had left it outside Miss Pink’s front door.
‘He has his boat,’ Miss Pink said.
‘He hasn’t taken that anywhere. I’ve been reading this evening; I didn’t have the television on, so I’d have heard the sound of an outboard. For my money, he’s gone to ground with one of the crofters out on the lighthouse road.’
They looked at the few lights burning seaward of the North Wood. ‘At least, I hope he has,’ Esme said.
***
The search for Campbell started after breakfast. Coline was maintaining there was no proof that the cottage had been deliberately set on fire, and since the firemen confirmed that there were no human remains in the debris, word had gone out from the lodge that the fire was an accident. Nevertheless, some people felt a compulsion to find Campbell.
Knox was not on duty this weekend and, with Coline and Hamish on ponies and Ranald in a Land Rover, the four of them started to search. Miss Pink, rising late, went back to the ruins of the cottage.
No smoke rose from the charred remains inside the walls. Mindful of the danger to woodland, and of Coline’s presence, the firemen had made a thorough job of damping down. Miss Pink stood in the gap where the front door had been and surveyed the interior. There was the shape of a blackened cooker, the metal struts and springs of three bedsteads, the frame of a table and what had been kitchen chairs. Everything that could burn had burned. The blaze had been intense.
She crossed a patch of grass where a sooty washing-line was stretched between a stout post and the barn. The latter was small, with half-doors in front and an ordinary door at the side which was open; it revealed a space which had once been a byre but was now used for storage. Driftwood was stacked against a wall above a saw-horse and chopping block. There was a work bench below a rack of tools. Everything was in good order and neatly hung or stacked: a cross-cut and a bow saw, a felling axe and hatchets, lobster pots, gardening implements. There were also two ten-gallon drums, one empty, the other indicating by its residue that it contained heavy oil. A five-gallon jerry-can lay empty on the earth floor. A dark patch reeked of petrol.
Miss Pink picked up a garden fork and returned to the cottage. Starting at the front door, she began to rake through the ashes, a task complicated by metal objects which had been contorted and fused: a heater, many small and unidentifiable structures and a curiously familiar article that turned out to be the keys and guts of a typewriter. The petrol smell was here too. There was a lot of glass where you’d expect to find it, under the window gaps. It crackled underfoot, but when she trod on something that rolled and didn’t crack, she stopped and teased it clear with the fork.
First testing its temperature with a finger, she picked it up gingerly: a rounded piece of thick glass, black but still recognisable: part of a milk bottle.
She replaced the fork in the barn and started to search the old byre. In a manger she found a funnel. Leaving it where it was, she returned to her car and drove to Feartag.
‘Petrol bombs?’ exclaimed Beatrice, turning the piece of glass in her hand. ‘I can’t believe it! This could have come from a bottle that never contained anything other than milk.’
‘True. But the petrol can has been emptied recently, and the funnel was used; there’s a damp patch in the manger where it was lying. Certainly I can’t think why he didn’t carry the can to the cottage and splash the petrol around and set fire to a trail with a match. But if he’d done that, he’d surely have left the can at the fire, not replaced it in the barn. And where would the funnel come in? The way things are, it points to petrol bombs.’
‘But you’re implying—no, it’s impossible.’ Miss Pink was silent. Beatrice, watching her, said slowly, ‘It looks as if he went to amazing lengths to try to prove someone was after him.’
Still Miss Pink said nothing. ‘Who would hate him so much?’ Beatrice asked weakly. ‘You are suggesting that someone thought he was inside, or have I misread you completely?’
‘Only partially. I wasn’t thinking of a potential murderer, only an arsonist.’
‘Only?’
‘It’s not so bad if the person didn’t intend to kill Campbell, only to destroy fingerprints.’
‘You’ve started to believe that story?’
‘What time did Campbell leave here yesterday afternoon?’
‘He finished at five. Why?’
‘Some time around then, while the sun was still high enough to be on the wall at the back of the street, Hamish Knox came home the back way, through the park. I thought he’d been up at the lodge exercising the ponies.’ Miss Pink moved across the sitting room and regarded the yellowing birches on the far bank of the river.
From behind her came a shocked voice: ‘You’re suggesting that Ha
mish had something to do with the fire?’
‘What I’m saying is that it looks as if bottles were filled with petrol, that I can’t think why Campbell should do that unless, as you say, he’s trying to put the blame on someone else—and I’m telling you that I saw Hamish come home, and not openly, about the time when Campbell says he found an intruder in his cottage.’
‘That’s fantasy. Hamish would never break into a place, let alone set it on fire. Why should he? You’re talking about mindless violence, the kind of thing you get in inner cities. I know these people. That cottage is Coline’s property and she’s well respected. And Hamish’s father is the policeman!’
‘Having an affair with the nurse.’ Miss Pink tried to restore balance.
Beatrice shifted ground, but angrily. ‘Have you forgotten Alec’s dog? Hamish is guilty and terrified. I’d expect him to come home over his back wall; I’d be surprised if he didn’t after what happened last time he went along the street. If anyone is dangerous in this village it’s Alec, but that danger is out in the open. Of course,’ she added more thoughtfully, ‘Campbell is a danger to himself. Forget about Hamish. I feel I should be doing something. What do you say to taking a flask and some sandwiches and driving around?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Looking for Campbell, of course. I can’t work in the garden knowing he’s out there somewhere in need of help. And where’s his boat anyway?’
‘I’ve looked for it, but I can’t see it anywhere in the bay.’
‘Then let’s start moving.’
They drove to the end of the lighthouse road where they found the lodge’s Land Rover parked outside the perimeter wall. The light was automatic, so there were no keepers to call on. They walked down one side of the wall to the top of the cliffs, but saw nothing untoward except a group of gannets beating low past the headland. Beyond the Minch the hills of the Hebrides were insubstantial, a gauzy mirage.
Miss Pink sniffed the air. ‘The wind’s backing.’
Beatrice squinted at the Long Island. ‘You’re right, and the visibility’s not so sharp. I think we’ve seen the last of the Indian summer.’
‘Two more days, do you reckon?’