Hamish Macbeth - Death Of A Dustman Part 9

"Your husband?"

"Yes. He said he was going to the Rotary Club. He said he would be staying the night with a friend of ours. I must have been mad. I decided to go for it. It wasn't worth it. I felt miserable and ashamed in the morning. Just to get away nicely, like a fool I gave him my address. When I got that letter, I didn't put it in one of the paper boxes, I put it in with the general rubbish. But that ferret of a man was sifting through everyone's rubbish."

"Why now?" said Hamish. "I mean, why did he suddenly start blackmailing? I mean, if that letter had been in the box for papers, I could understand it. I could understand him being tempted. But to suddenly take it out of the general garbage. Maybe he'd already stumbled onto something profitable."

"I'm not the only one?"

"No. Where were you the night Fergus was murdered?"

"I went out to a meeting at the church, came home, watched a bit of television with my husband and went to bed. Oh, please, can you try to stop this getting out?"

"I'll do my best. Let me know if you hear anything. Anything at all."

"I must have been mad," she said, half to herself. "I've always been respectable. The boys are doing well, both in jobs in Glasgow. I blame the television."

"How's that?"

"Well, women like me sit up here in the very north of Scotland, night after night, watching beautiful people. Morals never seem to bother them. Then the day comes when women like me think, I'll have some of that. And some of that turns out to be a sordid night with a travelling salesman. Men sleep around, why shouldn't women? That's what they preach on the box. But to old-fashioned women like me, I can't get rid of the old values of loyalty and modesty. Do you remember when modesty in women was considered a virtue?"

"I'm not old enough," said Hamish ruefully.

After he had left Mrs. Docherty, he went back to the police station. Jimmy Anderson was sitting in the police office, his feet on the desk.

"Where's Clarry?" asked Hamish.

"I sent him off on a tour of the village, asking as many people as possible if they saw anything. I've got two coppers from Strathbane doing the same thing. Get anything?"

"Not much," said Hamish.

"That's not like you. Come on. You've got something up your sleeve."

"Not me. I'm off to check some of the outlying crofts. What are you going to do?"

"Coordinate," said Jimmy vaguely. "Take that weird dog of yours with you. I thought he wasn't going to let me into the station."

"So how'd you get in?"

"One whole packet of chocolate wafer biscuits."

"Whit? You're a bad man, Jimmy. You'll ruin his teeth."

Hamish went into the bathroom and collected his toothbrush and toothpaste. Then he grabbed the unsuspecting Lugs from under the kitchen table and began to forcibly brush the dog's teeth. Then he put the dog down in front of his water bowl. He drank thirstily and then looked accusingly up at Hamish.

"Come on, boy. It's no use you looking at me like that. How can you bite Blair if your teeth fall out?"

Soon Hamish was driving off out of Lochdubh with a sulky Lugs on the seat beside him.

Angus Ettrik's croft lay off the Drim Road. He turned up a narrow lane, stopping at one point to get down and shoo some of Angus's sheep back into the fields.

Angus's wife, Kirsty, was hanging out sheets in the garden, although it was not really a garden, more a dump for old machinery. A washing machine leaned against a television set. Two rusting cars and various bits of machinery stood testament to the Highland crofter's weakness. Nothing was ever thrown away because it 'might come in handy sometime.'

"What's up?" asked Kirsty, coming towards him. She was a small, dark, gypsy-looking woman.

"Angus about?"

"He's up at the peats. What's it about?"

"Just asking everyone round about."

"Oh, the murder. That was awful, so it was."

Hamish nodded to her and got into the Land Rover and then drove as far as he could along a heathery track.

He finally got down and, followed by Lugs, walked the last half mile to the peat stacks. Angus was cutting peats. As Hamish approached him, he turned over in his mind what he knew about the crofter. He had a reputation of being lazy, but that wasn't unusual in the Highlands where the doctor's surgery was at its busiest on a Monday morning with men complaining of bad backs. He and Kirsty did not have children. He was a small wiry man with a thick shock of dark hair going grey at the sides. His face was permanently tanned from working outdoors.

He saw Hamish but continued to cut peats. He had a tractor and trailer beside him. The trailer was already loaded up with cut peats, like dark slices of cake.

"How's it going, Angus?"

Angus paused and looked up at the tall policeman. "What do ye want?"

"I want to know if Fergus Macleod was blackmailing you."

Angus looked down. "Havers," he muttered. Then he raised his head. "Do I look like the sort o' cheil that would let a dustman blackmail me?"

"He had found a letter from your bank refusing to let you have any more credit."

"And do you think he would try to blackmail a poor crofter wi' that? Man, you know the situation in the Highlands. It's crawlin' these days wi' crofters getting letters like that. But I naff my pride, and I don't want them at Strathbane pawing over letters to me!"

"I can't suppress evidence-well, not for much longer, Angus. It's probably of no importance and yet, why did he keep it? Did he call on you?"

"Chust to empty the bins, him and his silly uniform."

"We'll leave it for the moment. I still can't figure out why Fergus would keep such a letter unless he hoped to get something out of it."

"That's your job, isn't it?" sneered Angus. "Always looking for dirt. Well, good clean peat dirt iss all you'll be finding here."

"Think about it," said Hamish. "Where were you the night Fergus was killed?"

"What night would that be?"

"July twenty-second."

"I wa.s.s down on the waterfront having a jar wi' some o' the fishermen afore they went out."

"The bar's closed."

"Aye, but we wa.s.s just sitting on the harbour wall, Archie Maclean, me and the others, having a smoke and a crack."

"I'll check that. Then what?"

"Then I walked home. I didnae want to drive so I hadnae the car."

"And you didn't see Fergus on that night?"

"Not a sight."

"Right. But think again why he might have kept that letter."

Angus bent to cutting peats and Hamish walked away, followed by his dog. When he got to the Land Rover, he drove back to Angus's croft and called in at the kitchen door. "Anybody home?"

Kirsty appeared, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n. "I've just been to see your man, Kirsty. I found a letter from your bank manager among Fergus's effects, and I wondered if he had been trying to blackmail you."

She looked shocked. "I neffer heard the like. Why blackmail us? That letter should've told him we didn't have any money."

"That's what puzzles me," said Hamish.

"He wa.s.s friendly enough," said Kirsty. "We neffer had any trouble wi' him taking our garbage, not like them in Lochdubh." Her eyes fell to Lugs, and she gave a little shriek.

"What's up?" asked Hamish.

"That dog of yours. You shouldnae hae a dog like that."

"Why?"

"It's got blue eyes."

"So?"

Kirsty lowered her voice. "Animals wi' eyes like that are people who've come back. Get it out of here. It's bad luck."

Lugs suddenly darted round Hamish and into the cottage. Kirsty let out a wail of terror and threw her ap.r.o.n over her head. "Get it out!" she screamed.

Hamish pushed past her into the kitchen and scooped up his dog, who was sitting under the stove, looking longingly up at a stew pot which was simmering on the hob.

Tucking the dog firmly under one arm, he marched out of the cottage. Kirsty was sitting on a rock, keening and holding her arms tightly about her body.

"Come on, Kirsty," said Hamish. "It iss chust the wee dog."

"Go away," whispered Kirsty.

Hamish shrugged helplessly. Although he suffered from a fair amount of Highland superst.i.tion himself, he was still amazed at how extreme it could be in other Highlanders.

He carried Lugs back to the Land Rover. Better check with Archie whether Angus had been where he said he had been on the night Fergus had been killed.

"Aye, I mind fine he was here," said Archie, sitting like a gnome on the harbour wall in the tight suit he usually sported and which the villagers swore his wife boiled, dried and ironed.

"A' what time?"

"Early-ish. About seven o' clock. We was just about to go out, but Niven had a bottle o' whisky and we pa.s.sed it around."

"So what was Angus talking about?"

"Price o' sheep. Usual crofter's complaint."

"Did he talk about Fergus?"

"Wait a bit. We was saying what a wee b.a.s.t.a.r.d the dustman was and Angus said something like, he was all right if you got on the right side of him."

"Anything else?"

"No, then we had to go out to the fishing. He said he would walk home. I said, that's a fair walk, and he said he was used to it and with petrol prices going up, we'd all have to learn to walk like in the old days. He left about seven o'clock."

"They think from the contents of the stomach that Fergus was killed some time later that evening. Someone must have heard something. This is a village. Someone must have been looking out."

"Inspector Morse was on television. That waud be from eight o'clock to ten."

"The whole o' Lochdubh can't have been watching Inspector Morse."

"If my ain wife wouldnae miss it, then no one else is going to."

Momentarily amused by the fact that the Highland villagers should find murder and mayhem in the Oxford colleges so enthralling, Hamish then said, "So you got the impression that Fergus was friendly with Angus?"

"I couldnae say for sure. But he was the only one of us not to have a hard word to say for Fergus."

"And how's Callum McSween coping?"

"He's different. He's such a cheery man that we thought, well why not put the d.a.m.n things in the right bins. If Fergus had been like him, we'd all have gone along with it."

Hamish walked back to the police station. Clarry was out. Hamish hoped he was working and not wandering around the shelves of Patel's store, planning elaborate meals. He fed Lugs and sat down in the police office, turning over and over the little he knew. If nothing broke, then he was going to be obliged to turn the letters over to Blair. Then he suddenly thought of Mrs. Fleming. To interfere at such cost in the sanitation of a small Highland village surely betrayed some fanaticism. He looked up as Jimmy Anderson strolled in.

"No Blair?" asked Hamish.

"No, and my feet are sore. It's a small village. I decided to go round everyone myself, but your man, Clarry, always seemed to have been there just before me."

"What about Mrs. Fleming?"

"That tart? What about her?"

"I keep wondering what's behind all this greening o' Lochdubh."

Jimmy grinned. "I know, you think she thought Fergus wasn't doing his job so she hit him with the hammer."

"Sounds daft. But what do we know of her?"

"She was just an ordinary councillor. Then suddenly she gets promoted to Director of the Environment. Rumour has it the provost got into her knickers."