Hartinger's Mouse (Commander Shaw Book 12)

by Philip McCutchan

  I thought it was time I said something and not just go on staring. I asked, “You’re Tam McFee?”

  The voice was just a whisper and it came out with an obvious effort, the lips scarcely moving. “Aye, I am, mister. Who be you then?” He may have hated strangers, but he wasn’t turning one away from his lonely distress.

  I didn’t answer his question directly. I said, “I’ve come to help. Help stop this thing. Where have you been the last few days, Tam?”

  “Here, nowhere else.” He coughed, a terrible racking noise that must have shortened his frail life by a minute or so.

  “When did this — this illness start?”

  “Yesterday. I was away up to the road early this morning and caught the nurse on her rounds. She says it’s like to be the eczema, but I’ll no’ believe that, mister.” There was a cackle in his throat, a terrible sound in those surroundings. “That wee woman hasna the brain to tell a cold in the head from a childbirth … I telt her that.”

  “What do you think it is, Tam?” If he hadn’t been out and about the last few days, he probably wouldn’t have heard of the panic in the world beyond Druim a Chliabhain. That being so I was much interested in his reply to my question.

  He said, “It’s the rats.”

  I shivered. I couldn’t help it. “What rats?” I asked. “You haven’t rats in the caravan, have you?”

  “No,” he said. I could see he was weakening fast but I had to press. “They … they came from over yonder.” He tried to wave a hand but couldn’t manage it. He closed his eyes and I thought he’d already gone, but after an interval he went on so quietly that I had to bend even closer to hear him at all. “From Loch Cuillart way. Scurryin’ through the grass and the underbrush. No’ like the way rats usually move, I thought.” He didn’t seem particularly concerned.

  I asked, “Did they attack you, Tam? Was that it?”

  “Och, no. I caught them.”

  “But why?”

  He said distinctly, “To eat.”

  I drew in my breath, sharply. To eat. Poor old so-and-so. Still, I dare say he’d had many a good meal from them in the past and I’d heard rats are not so different from rabbit to a really hungry man. But in Britain in this day and age … it was grim. And this time he had struck a bad one. I asked, “How many were there?”

  “I couldna say. I caught just the two for the pot.”

  I nodded. “Now listen, Tam. When it rains up here … have you ever noticed a sort of yellow muck, a deposit of dust mixed with rain, on your caravan?”

  He said. “No.” Then something happened to his face. It seemed to expand, even to move beneath the beard — it could have been that visible spread of the disease — and his mouth opened wide. His tongue protruded and, I thought, swelled. He said something like “God, please help me,” and then he started coughing, practically bringing up his guts. I dodged back out of the spray and I saw the disease red on his lips, then his pupils disappeared in the bloodshot whites, or perhaps, I don’t know, it could have been the disease spreading even to the eyes. His face went rigid and the teeth came down on the tongue in a hard clamp and the tongue swelled out in front of them. And in that grotesque facial contortion, he died. I sat in something of a trance for a while until I heard a hoarse squeaking behind me, and a scurry of feet, and I turned in a flash and the beam of my torch lit on four round red discs, which were eyes, and two fat and heavy brown bodies, rat sized but mouse built — there is a distinct difference but without my background knowledge I doubt if I would have thought about it. I was out of that caravan inside three seconds, I think, and running like the wind for the road to Balnachan. My hands were shaking so much that I could hardly get my car key into the lock and I didn’t feel safe until I was in and the door had slammed hard behind me, shutting me off from those overgrown mice, Fesse’s mice. I knew I should have washed my hands in the loch, but just then nothing would have induced me to leave the safety of my car. I drove away fast for the village, but stopped along the way when I saw the sparkle of water in a stream beside the road. I washed my hands and I soaked my handkerchief and went back to the car and soused the steering wheel and hand-brake and gear-lever and anything else I might have touched, including the door handles. Then I chucked the handkerchief into the stream and washed again and drove into Balnachan.

  The bar was still open and I sank two large scotches in double-quick time.

  The policeman’s niece was still in the bar and she gave me a look of enquiry. “You look white,” she said.

  I passed it off. “Sheer thirst,” I said. “I’ll redden soon.” Then I realized what I’d said and hoped to God it wouldn’t be a case of many a true word said in jest. The girl laughed and made some remark or other about drink and the devil and then I retreated to a corner and the girl flicked a record-player on. I picked up a London daily newspaper that some newly-arrived guest had left in the bar and I read that a BOAC air stewardess, last seen some days before, was still missing. Jane Airdrie. God forgive me, I’d forgotten all about that girl. I read the report; there wasn’t much of it. The police had no leads and Miss Airdrie’s flat-mate didn’t know anything and hadn’t been able to help. The father and step-mother, holidaying in the Canaries, had flown back. They hadn’t been able to help either, they didn’t know of any reason why she should have disappeared. She’d had no shady friends — Colonel Airdrie’s own phrase, that was — and she had always been a girl who told them everything and had no secrets. Ha, ha, I thought in sorrowful cynicism. That was what parents always imagined. Yet, in this particular case, having met Jane Airdrie, I felt they could have been right. And that didn’t help either. I wondered how she was getting on with that sore finger, the start of the skin-loss symptom. With luck, it would have left her the same as it had left me. On the other hand, I supposed it could have spread and she had died somewhere and they hadn’t found her yet.

  I was wondering this when Fesse walked into the bar.

  *

  That entry by Fesse shook me rigid. It was so nonchalant and easy and so totally unconcerned. He was wearing sporty clothes with a silk scarf beneath an open-necked check shirt and he looked lit and relaxed. I was sitting in an alcove and he didn’t see me at first. He went up to the bar and I heard the girl say as she turned off the music, “Good evening. Professor Fesse. We’ve not seen you for quite a while. The usual, is it?”

  Fesse said genially, “Thank you, yes. You are well, Morag?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I heard a siphon at work, fizzing soda into a glass. I sat where I was. I suppose I was genuinely dumbfounded. Damn it all, I’d only had to ask! Ask over the bar for Fesse. Talk about wasted time! Morag would have told me all about him. I sat and eavesdropped for a bit but I didn’t pick up anything worth while. Fesse and Morag simply exchanged bar chat about what things were like down south and how Balnachan went on just as ever and only the changing seasons marked the passage of time — that sort of thing. Morag told Fesse about old Tam McFee and Fesse expressed horror. They talked in distressed voices about the terrible spread of the disease and Morag tried to pick Fesse’s brains medically, but all he said was that before long the thing would be licked, and after that there was a pause while Morag fixed another drink for him.

  I got up and went over to the bar. Fesse looked round. Some kind of an expression flitted across his heavy face but I couldn’t read it. I don’t believe it was surprise. I wondered just how much that man knew about all the remote-control shadowing by the police forces from Cambridge to John o’ Groats, and I wondered just how, and where, he had hidden his face since the Mercedes had last been seen — and why the local police hadn’t cottoned on. Especially that. After all, I’d given that description. I smiled and said, “Professor Fesse. Small world!”

  “Indeed, yes. Mr Shaw, is it not, of the Home Office?”

  “Right.”

  “You will join me in a drink?”

  I nodded. “Thanks. Scotch, please.” Morag, I noticed, was looking
at us with some interest. She executed the order then folded her arms on the bar and said, “So you two gentlemen have met before?”

  “Briefly,” Fesse said. “Just very briefly. And may I ask what brings you this far north, Mr Shaw?”

  I shrugged. “Just the holiday spirit.”

  “Ah. In spite of the urgency of … the matter I think you said you were engaged upon?”

  “I’m not indispensable, Professor. My colleagues can manage quite well without me.”

  Fesse laughed. “As a naturalized Briton I cannot with propriety talk about ‘you British’ … in the third person, you understand. Nevertheless … I have a feeling the native British are not over-zealous at times.”

  I said carelessly, twiddling my glass in my fingers, “Oh, it does take a lot to overcome the national urge to take a holiday, I agree. Even in times of emergency. I seem to have heard that even in the war, people took their holidays just the same.”

  I think Morag sensed something between us; anyway, she gave a small embarrassed cough and unfolded her arms and made a pretence of washing up some glasses. She was listening hard, all the same. Suddenly I asked Fesse, “How about you? Is Cambridge University generous with time off. Professor?”

  He smiled and said, “I am privileged to decide my own movements. I take a few days here, a few days there, sometimes a long vacation. I am the one who knows when I am needed and when I can be spared.”

  That, no doubt, explained how it was that the University authorities hadn’t been worried enough to inform the police about what I had been taking as Fesse’s sudden dash for cover. It had just been one of his vacations. Also, as I knew for myself from the suffix letter, the Mercedes was a new car and Morag had made some remark about Fesse not having been around for some while. So the new car wouldn’t be known locally. This, however, still didn’t tell me why the local police hadn’t ticked over about Fesse himself. Maybe that would emerge soon, I thought; but I realized it wasn’t going to emerge via Fesse when he finished that second drink, refused my offer of another, and called goodnight to Morag. He told me he hoped we would meet again.

  “I reciprocate that,” I said. “I’m sure we will. Are you staying long, up here?”

  “Who can say?” he answered indifferently. “One’s work dictates, do you not find this?”

  I didn’t respond and he turned away and left the bar. I gave him half a minute then I, too, went out into the night. I went towards my hired car and got in. I was puzzled; there was no sound of any other car, but Fesse couldn’t possibly have got himself out of earshot in the time, I wouldn’t have thought. Then I heard a clip-clopping sound and a horse came around from the rear of the hotel with Fesse on its back. He bent to peer into my car and as he went past he gave me a sardonic smile and an exaggerated wave of the hand accompanied by a low bow. Bleakly, I scowled through the windscreen at the man’s back as he went on past. The only thing that could reasonably tail a horse was another horse. I would look a bit of a prune holding back on a Maxi and trying to look as though I wasn’t there at all.

  So all I did was to note that Fesse had turned his horse in a northerly direction, which really didn’t mean a thing, and then I went to bed.

  *

  I had a word with Morag in the morning, when she brought my tea in. “Funny.” I said casually. “Meeting the professor like that. Does he often come here?”

  “Off and on. More off than on.”

  “Where does he live, Morag?”

  She wrinkled her nose; she was an attractive girl and somehow that nose-wrinkling action added to her looks and personality. She said, “Well, do you know, that’s something I’ve never found out, Mr Shaw.”

  I grinned and gave her a wink. “But you’ve tried to?”

  “Och, I don’t think I’ve ever bothered that much! Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Just an acquaintance.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ll tell you this: he gives me the creeps.”

  “I thought you were pretty friendly last night.”

  “We have to be, haven’t we, with the customers. It’s not always meant.”

  I nodded. “What don’t you like about him, Morag?”

  “It’s hard to say. It’s just a feeling I have. He doesn’t know anybody here, and he never talks to anyone but me. No-one seems to know him, either. He keeps himself to himself, you know?” She added, “Even my uncle’s never seen him.”

  “The policeman from Croughan?”

  “Aye, that’s right. He’s a man of the night, the professor.”

  I asked, “How d’you mean, Morag?”

  “I think he only goes out at night when he’s up around this way. It’s only ever been at night he’s come into the hotel. I teased him about it once, and I’ll say this, he didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Perhaps he has a soft spot for you, Morag.”

  She said, “God forbid. But I wouldn’t mind betting he’s a dirty old man.”

  “Not all that old,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t be thus classified at Fesse’s age. “What did he say, when you teased him?”

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s hard to remember just exactly what he did say, but it was something about the war. He fought in the German Army and I think they only moved about at night or something, but I may have got it wrong.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” I said. I yawned. “Thanks for bringing the tea, Morag.”

  “It’s a pleasure.” She scratched the tip of her right forefinger with her thumb.

  Seeing the action with sudden alarm I asked, “What’s up with your finger?”

  “It itches,” she said.

  I went cold. I took a deep breath. I hated to alarm the girl unnecessarily, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be unnecessarily. I said, giving her a steady look, “Listen, Morag. Go and wash your hands in my basin. At once. Use plenty of soap and water. Don’t use my towel and don’t touch anything on the way.”

  She stared at me, her face whitening, the eyes wide with sudden fear. “Why?” she asked.

  “Just do it. Please, Morag.” I held her eyes. She moved slowly towards the basin, like a robot. She washed her hands, let them drip obediently.

  “Is this the disease?” she asked.

  I said, “Morag, I’m not a doctor. I don’t know. But it could be. It started that way with me — and you mustn’t think I’ve got it and gave it to you. That’s not the case at all. What I’m telling you is this: because I washed immediately I had come in contact with it, the itch passed off and the disease never developed. It’ll be the same with you, now you’ve done as I told you, but as a precaution I’d see a doctor as fast as you can.”

  Dully she said, “What’s the use? The doctors don’t know. None of them know, the papers say.”

  “The papers don’t know it all, either. They’re scaremongering half the time. Try not to worry, Morag. Just tell me this: we know Tam McFee had it. Have you had any contact with him?”

  “Of course I haven’t.”

  “Anybody else who could have been an intermediary — say, the district nurse?”

  She shook her head. “No. No-one that would have been near old Tam.”

  I said, “Fesse. Did he touch you at all?”

  “He shook hands,” she said, “when he came in last night.” She left my room when she had said that, trembling badly and with shock and horror in her eyes. I watched the trim little mini-skirt move out of my door and when she had gone I got out of bed and washed my own hands thoroughly — it was a kind of reflex action almost — then I took the tea she had made for me and poured it down the plug-hole and washed the cup and saucer and teapot and all. After that I washed my hands again and lit a cigarette. It didn’t have to prove anything, of course, because Fesse could have picked it up down south and brought it with him but in my own mind it was one more pointer to Fesse’s guilt. I didn’t have breakfast that day but when I went downstairs the manageress was in a state of nervous anxiety and told me Morag had gone off to
the doctor’s surgery. I got in my car and drove over to Kinbrace and saw the police. I reported old Tam’s death and impressed upon them that Fesse must be found, and fast, and I told them he would be found not all that far from Balnachan, though not necessarily within horse-riding distance. He could have exchanged that horse for a car somewhere along the way. I also said the thing must still be handled with the greatest discretion and that Fesse was not to be arrested or panicked, only located for me. Then I carried on with my own search, once again with a totally nil result. I drove back into Balnachan at around 1830 hours and found the bar shut. The manageress said it wouldn’t be opening again. Morag had been taken to the isolation hospital with sores all over her body and she had died half an hour ago.

  At 1850 hours Jagger walked into the hotel.

  *

  Jagger was in a state of suppressed nervous excitement. He had flown north, he said, with something very important, landing from a specially-laid-on plane at Dalcross on the Moray Firth. I said how terribly sorry I was about young Claire and his face tightened and he said Beth was almost out of her mind about that and the worry about the boy, who wasn’t too good; but the Jagger parents had come over from Malta, which they used as a tax haven, so she was in good hands. He added that things were reaching the proportions of chaos in the south with almost everything at a standstill. He said you just wouldn’t believe Piccadilly unless you saw it for yourself. It was virtually deserted except for patrolling policemen. There was talk of calling in troops to guard Government buildings, especially the Ministry of Health and 10 Downing Street, which was where such crowds as there were had mostly congregated. There had been some nasty incidents and the Prime Minister had been hit on the head by the jagged end of a broken beer bottle chucked from the crowd in Parliament Square. In Wellington Barracks a Guards regiment had been equipped with hoses and tear gas and were standing by for orders from the GOC, London District. Jagger seemed relieved to be in Balnachan.