There had evidently been a village on the point between the river Skag and the North Sea for as long as anyone could remember, but in the 1880s, weeks of torrential rain and high winds and high tides had caused river and sea to meet in one roaring flood which had covered the whole village. The village had remained drowned for weeks before the waters had receded. Ten years later, when the village had been rebuilt and was thriving again, great gales had come tearing over the North Sea from Scandinavia, whipping up the white sand and eventually burying the whole village. After the houses had been excavated, trees and razor-grass had been planted on the other side of the river, where a Scottish Sahara of white sand dunes stretched for miles to stop the sand from shifting.
He bought a small book on the history of the village and went back out without stopping to look at any of the exhibits in glass cases. The narrow, unsurfaced streets were deserted. Ribbons of sand snaked along them like feelers put out by some alien creature. The trouble with Scottish villages like this, thought Hamish, was that all the community life had been bled out of them. Cars took the villagers out at night to the bright lights of the town. The villagers would often blame the incomers for having destroyed village life, but it was the automobile which had done that, making nomads of even the elderly. There was no putting the clock back now.
And then Hamish thought he was falling into the messy ways of thinking of so many—that the good old days had been better. Not so long ago, Skag would have been a closed-in fishing community, repressed and dark and secretive, everything kept under wraps—incest, drunkenness, violence, child abuse, pregnant girls forced to marry men who did not want them, all the miseries coloured by the overriding horror of living in poverty or the fear of having to.
So now the young people left the quiet Scottish villages and were replaced by incomers from the south, who claimed they had come in search of “the quality of life” which meant they got regularly drunk with all the other incomers fleeing from reality. But the village did have an odd eerie charm, filled as it was with the sound of rushing water from the river and the susurration of the gritty white sand blowing in the streets. There was one shop still open, manned by the inevitable Asian. A Scottish shopkeeper closed up at tea-time, no matter how bad trade was. It sold newspapers, sweets, postcards, and toys, and an odd assortment of household goods. Next to it was a dress-shop, Paris Fashions, with two dresses drooping in the window and with price-tags marking the gowns down from £120 to £85. Hamish wondered if they would ever sell. But where tea-shops used to be the last refuge of the genteel, now it was dress-shops, which opened their doors for a few months before facing up to the fact that with cheap clothes so near at hand in the local town, it was folly to try to sell Bond Street fashions at Bond Street prices.
There were two churches, one Free Church of Scotland and one Church of Scotland. A poster outside the Church of Scotland was half torn and fluttering in the wind. It said, “Life is Fragile. Handle with Prayer.”
Turning away from it, Hamish saw Bob Harris. He was coming out of a house at the end of the main street, his walk denoting that he was still drunk. His face was flushed and he had a triumphant smile on his face. He’s just made someone’s life a misery, thought Hamish. I wonder who lives there. Then he suddenly did not want to know anything more about Bob Harris and about whom he had been possibly persecuting. He walked instead to the harbour and sat on a bollard and looked down into the water.
The wind suddenly dropped and all was very quiet and still. He reflected that it must be the turn of the tide. It was a phenomenon he had noticed before. Just at the turn of the tide, nature held its breath—no bird sang, everything seemed to be waiting and waiting. And then, sure enough, as if someone had flicked a switch, every-thing started in motion again.
He got up and decided to go straight back to the hotel, collect a couple of paperbacks, and walk Towser along the beach. He occasionally wondered who it was who had searched his case but decided it had probably been Rogers, whose motive had been nothing more sinister than vulgar curiosity.
He felt a pang of guilt at not rejoining the others, but then reminded himself severely that he was not related to them, barely knew them, neither was he on police duty. If Bob Harris murdered his wife, then that was his business. And so, comforting himself with these callous thoughts, he loped home, collected Towser and the paperbacks, and set out along the beach in the opposite direction from Skag. He found a comfortable hollow and settled down to read with Towser at his feet. It would not get really dark. A pearly twilight would settle down about one in the morning for about two hours.
He read a tough-cop American detective story. The detective in it seemed to get results by punching confessions out of people, which gave Hamish a vicarious thrill as he thought of the scandal and miles of red tape that would descend on his head if he tried to do the same thing. The story ended satisfactorily with the detective incinerating the villains in a warehouse and getting a medal for bravery from the mayor in front of a cheering crowd on the steps of City Hall. America must be a marvellous country, thought Hamish wryly, if any of this was real. He imagined what would happen to him if he did the same thing. He would be hauled up before his superiors, who would want to know first of all why he had tackled the villains single-handed and not called for back-up, and why he had wrecked three police cars. Then he would be told that when he had finished writing all that out in triplicate, he would be interviewed by the gentlemen who owned the warehouse and their insurance company to explain why he had torched billions of dollars’ worth of stock.
With a sigh of satisfaction, he stood up and stretched and set back along the beach for the boarding-house.
He had been looking forward to reading the other book, but Bob Harris was berating his wife next door and she was crying. Hamish ripped up pieces of tissue paper to form ear-plugs, buried his head under the pillow and fell asleep.
Hamish had fully intended to keep the next day for himself, but when he entered the dining-room for breakfast, all eyes turned to him hopefully. It was the sight of Doris’s sad face that made up his mind for him. He suddenly did not care whether Doris fell in love with Andrew or not. She might have a little happiness to remember in her otherwise miserable life.
“Whit are we daein’ the day, Hamish?” Cheryl called over to him.
“I thought you would all have had enough of bloody civil servants,” growled Bob Harris. “Petty little bureaucrats.”
Hamish ignored him. “I was down at the harbour yesterday evening,” he said, “and I noticed that you can hire a boat and fishing tackle. Anyone for fishing?”
They all agreed, with the exception of Bob, who sneered, “Fishing’s for fools.”
Dermott Brett said he would take his car into Skag because he didn’t want the children too tired with the walk before the day started. “Are you taking Towser?” asked Heather.
“Yes,” said Hamish. “He likes boats.”
Miss Gunnery said she would take her car as well and offered Hamish a lift. She frowned when Cheryl and Tracey begged a lift as well but said reluctantly that they could come too. Andrew and Doris said nothing. Hamish sensed a waiting in Doris. She was hoping she could slip away.
Nonetheless he was surprised when they all gathered on the harbour to find that Andrew had driven Doris in his car.
“Where’s Bob?” asked Dermott.
“He doesn’t want to come,” said Doris curtly.
They went to a hut at the back of the harbour where a surly man said he would supply them with tackle and take them out. They all paid their share of the cost. It was a large open boat with an outboard. The day was grey and still, the water flat and oily.
The boat owner, Jamie MacPherson, issued them with old life-jackets and even found some small ones for the children. He tried to object to Towser until he saw the party was going to cancel the trip if the dog wasn’t allowed on board.
They all climbed down a seaweed-slippery ladder from the jetty and onto the boat. Hamish
had taken a dislike to Jamie, but he had to admit the man was efficient. He had small rods for Heather and Callum and even a small stick with a thread and a bent pin on it for the toddler, Fiona. They chugged out into the North Sea until the boat stopped and they began to rig up their lines. There were various false alarms. Doris caught a bit of seaweed and June Brett, an old shoe.
The day was hazy and lazy and then Heather said suddenly, “Someone ought to kill Mr. Harris.”
“That’s enough of that, miss,” said her mother sharply and then looked apologetically at Doris.
“A lot of people want to kill Bob,” said Doris. “Don’t get angry with the child.”
“Why did you marry him?” asked Heather in her clear piping voice.
“People change,” said Doris on a sigh.
“It’s not easy to kill someone,” said Hamish, wondering if one of them might betray that he or she had searched his suitcase and knew he was a policeman.
Andrew laughed and then asked the question Hamish had been dreading. “Which branch of the civil service are you in, Hamish?”
“Min of Ag and Fish,” said Hamish, meaning the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.
“Anyone there you would like to kill?”
“Aye,” said Hamish, thinking of the bane of his life, Detective Chief Inspector Blair, “there’s this big fat Glaswegian wi’ a sewer mouth.”
“I always think the best murders are when they are committed by someone who didn’t know the victim,” said Miss Gunnery.
“There iss no such thing as a good murder,” said Hamish repressively. His Highland accent took on that sibilancy it always did when he was upset. “There iss nothing good in the taking of another’s life.”
“Well, I think that awfy Bob Harris waud be better dead,” said Tracey.
“Please do not say such things in front of Doris,” said Andrew sharply.
“She waud be glad tae see the last o’ him,” retorted Cheryl.
“In a book I was reading at school, the wicked girl in the remove was killed with a rare South African poison,” said Heather.
“You won’t get rare South African poisons in Skag,” said Hamish. “Murders are usually done in rage and they’re dreary and simple—a blow tae the head, a push down the stairs, an electric heater chucked in the bath, or something that looks like a climbing accident.”
“If he had come with us,” said Heather eagerly, “we could have pushed him overboard and said it was an accident.”
“What about Mr. MacPherson there?” said Hamish, jerking his thumb at the surly man at the tiller.
“We would need to pay him hush money,” said Heather.
She was told sharply by her mother to be quiet, but the fish weren’t biting and somehow the subject of killing Bob Harris just wouldn’t go away. Miss Gunnery raised a laugh by saying the food at the boarding-house was enough to kill anyone, and that started a discussion of the various methods of poisoning, from simple broken glass in the pudding to arsenic in the tea.
Hamish was relieved when they drifted into a shoal of mackerel and shrieks of excitement as the fish were landed drove thoughts of murder out of the heads of the party. Hamish agreed as they made their way back to the harbour that he would phone the hotel and tell the Rogerses that he would cook the mackerel for their tea. They ate sandwiches in the pub and then headed home with their catch, Hamish having found out that there was to be a dance in the Church of Scotland hall that evening and suggesting they all go. Dermott said he would stay behind with the children so that June could have a night out. They seemed to have the ideal marriage.
He did not expect that Doris would be able to go with them, but Bob Harris was absent from the tea table as they laughed and joked and ate grilled mackerel and voted Hamish cook of the year.
They gathered in the lounge to sort out who would go in which car. Cheryl and Tracey were both wearing very short black leather skirts with very high heels and skimpy tops with plunging necklines. Their blonded hair had been backcombed and left to stand on end. Miss Gunnery was a surprise. She had left off her glasses and her brown hair was combed down to her shoulders, soft and wavy. She was wearing a plain white blouse and black skirt and modest heels but she looked softer and more vulnerable. June was amazing in a shocking-pink chiffon dress with thin straps and a fake diamond necklace. Doris Brett had brushed down her hair and put on a plain black dress. She had a very good figure and Hamish noticed gloomily that Andrew Biggar was taking in that fact as well.
Miss Gunnery asked Hamish to drive her car, saying she couldn’t see a thing without her glasses. Cheryl and Tracey went with them.
Hamish had thought it would be a sort of ceilidh with reels and country dances, but it turned out to be a disco full of thin, badly nourished teenagers, brought up on a diet of bread and frozen food. Scotland has one of the worst diets in the world, shunning fresh fruit and green vegetables. Scotland is also famous for bad teeth and Hamish noticed that some of the young teenagers had dentures. The old idea still prevailed. If you have a toothache, get the tooth extracted.
“I can’t do that sort of dancing,” said Miss Gunnery. “They look like a lot of dervishes.”
“Oh, you jist throw yourself around,” said Hamish amiably. “Follow me.”
His long, gangling figure threw itself this way and that, and since his movements seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the beat of the music, the others joined him on the floor. If Hamish could make such a fool of himself, then they could, too.
It turned out to be a happy evening, and the teenagers who came up to talk to them turned into ordinary pleasant young people. One youth approached Hamish and whispered, “Hey, Mac, we got a drink outside.” Glad to see some of the old Highland traditions still existed, Hamish followed him outside, where he joined a group of youths. One passed him a half bottle of Scotch and Hamish took a hearty swig.
“Nice to see young people still around the villages,” he said. “I thought you would all be in town for the evening.”
“We hiv our ain fun,” said one, proving it by lighting up a joint. “Fancy a bit o’ skirt, grand-dad?”
Hamish, who was in his thirties, ignored the “grand-dad” and the smell of cannabis. He was on holiday, and unless someone slew someone in front of him, he did not plan to become a policeman again until the holiday was over.
“I’m with my own party,” he said amiably.
“Och, them,” said the youth derisively. “I mean bint, get a leg ower.”
“Oh,” said Hamish, the light dawning. “You mean a brothel.”
“Aye, Maggie Simpson’s, down the end of the main street.”
Hamish wondered suddenly if that had been the house he had seen Bob Harris leaving. “Not tonight,” he said. He crossed the road to the pub, bought a half bottle of whisky, and returned and passed it around. He found that not one of the youths was employed, that all dreamt of going to London or Glasgow. The boredom of their days was alleviated by a combination of drink, hash, and videos. And yet they seemed a nice enough bunch. A generation or two ago, before the dole was enough to drink on, they would have found work in fishing or farming. But they were as much slaves to pleasure and idleness as any dilettante aristocrat of a century ago.
He went back into the church hall and stared in delight at the spectacle of Miss Gunnery dancing with a slim leather-clad youth. Miss Gunnery appeared to have left her inhibitions behind with her glasses and hairpins. She was shaking and moving with the best of them. In a dark corner of the hall, Doris and Andrew were sitting side by side, talking intensely.
He took June Brett up for a dance, but she said she couldn’t abide “this modern stuff” and insisted on shuffling around trying to get him to do a foxtrot to a disco beat.
Hamish could not but help feeling pleased with himself. He knew his efforts were making it a happy holiday, even for such as the dreadful Cheryl and Tracey, who were dancing with stiff stork-like movements in their very high heels, their faces animated un
der their masks of dead-white make-up and purple eye-shadow.
It certainly never crossed his mind that this would be their last happy evening together, and that he himself would do something before the night was out that would start a chain of events leading to murder.
CHAPTER THREE
Fighting is all a mistake, friend Eric,
And has been so since the age Homeric . . .
—Adam Lindsay Gordon
When they arrived back at the boarding-house, Hamish noticed the way Doris’s anxious eyes flew to an upstairs window. A light was shining out into the odd twilight which replaces darkness in a northern summer. That would be her room, thought Hamish, the one at the front, next to mine.
Inside, he said his good-nights and made his way upstairs and then took Towser out along the beach for a walk. As soon as he returned to his room, he heard Bob Harris’s voice, loud and clear. “What the hell do you think you were doing, dressing up like a tart? Get that muck off your face. You look like a whore. A dance in a church? Are you out of your head? I don’t know why I put up with you. You make me sick. You go around making sheep’s eyes at men, but no one notices you. You’re insignificant. Always were. God knows why I married you.”
Doris whimpered something and then began to cry.
The nag’s voice went on. “Of course, you think that Biggar chap is interested in you but he’s just playing the gallant officer and gentleman. Never been married, I should guess. Too much fun with the chaps, if you ask me.”
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