M. Beaton: Death Of An Addict

"I'll just take a stroll along there," said Hamish. "We'll let it drop for the moment, Jock, but if anyone else sees anything, there'll have to be a proper investigation."

"Let's hope that'll be an end of it," said Jock. Hamish touched his cap and made his way along the edge of the loch. He found the path at the westward end of the village. As Jock had said, it was little more than a rabbit track. He strolled along. He was glad he had brought his torch, the towering mountains made the blackness of the night even blacker.

He welcomed the exercise. He wanted something to take his mind away from Tommy. After a while, he could hear the waves breaking on rocks ahead. So it would be around this point that Ailsa and Holly had seen their monster.

He swung his torch across the loch and let out a gasp as eyes stared straight back at him, eyes red in the torchlight. Then he laughed. Seals, nothing but seals. A whole colony of them. That must have been what Ailsa and Holly saw. He walked right to the sea, nonetheless, without coming across anything sinister.

His thoughts turned again to Tommy Jarret on the road back. It was a shame that one so young should have to die. But the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that the poor fellow had taken an overdose. Felicity had looked frightened at the sight of Hamish outside Patel's because she was an odd wispy creature who probably lived in some sort of private soap opera.

In the morning, he woke to marvel, not for the first time, at the mercurial changes the weather in the Highlands was capable of. Before he had gone to bed, the sky had been cloudless. Now it was raining steadily, with low clouds shrouding the tops of the mountains.

He did his chores about his croft at the back of the police station and then went indoors and changed into his uniform and phoned Strathbane police headquarters and asked to speak to Jimmy Anderson.

When Jimmy came on the line, Hamish asked if there had been any information from the pathologist. "You're too early, too soon," said Jimmy. "Give the man a bit o' time. You're not still suspecting murder?"

"I reserve judgement," said Hamish. "What was in thon book he was writing?"

"I don't know."

"What d'ye mean you don't know?" demanded Hamish sharply. "He was writing about his experience with drugs. There could have been some useful names in there. I thought maybe you'd taken some pages away."

"No, I didn't. Come on, Hamish. I grilled that bastard, 'member? Couldn't get the name of his suppliers out o' him. Why the hell would he put them in a book?"

"Just a thought," said Hamish huffily.

"He died of an overdose, plain and simple."

"While you're on the line, Jimmy, do you remember a couple of women in Drim reporting the sighting of a monster?"

"Not me. What are they up to in that nasty place? Trying to invent another Loch Ness Monster?"

"I shouldnae think so," said Hamish. "Do you 'member when that minister's wife and that television lassie produced that TV play featuring Drim? At first the tourists came in coachloads and the villagers didnae like it one bit. They even put a sign at the top of the road saying COACHES NOT WELCOME."

"Hamish, between the drunks up in your part of the world and the druggies down here, we get reports of monsters and UFOs every week."

"Just wondered."

"Well, wonder away and go back to your sheep." Hamish said goodbye and then debated what to do.

Then he decided to drive over to Glenanstey and have a word with Parry.

The birch trees around the chalet which Tommy had rented were weeping rainwater. Ferocious midges danced in and out of the raindrops. Hamish marvelled how the little beasts didn't get drowned. He knocked at Parry's door. There was no reply. He approached Tommy's chalet, wondering why there wasn't a policeman on duty. He tried the door and it opened. He went inside. Fingerprint dust was over everything. He stood in the doorway to the living room and looked around. The word processor stood on the table and beside it a small pile of typescript. He walked over and sat down at the table, took out a pair of thin gloves and put them on and began to read. Chapter one, which is all that there was, proved to be a disappointment. Tommy had meant his book to be an autobiography and the first chapter dealt with his school days. It was not very well written, the language being too flowery and loaded with similes.

He switched on the word processor and managed to find the beginning of the book. He ran through it. Only chapter one. Well, what had he expected? He had expected that Tommy had been killed because there was something incriminating in his manuscript.

He switched off the word processor and made sure that he had replaced the pages of manuscript exactly where he had found them.

Then he went outside and looked around. A policeman came up and stared at him suspiciously.

"I'm Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh," said Hamish easily.

"PC Peter Harvey," said the policeman. "I hope ye have nae been in there. I'm supposed to be guarding it. I just popped into the village for a cup of tea. It's a hell of a wet day."

"So what's happening now?"

"Nothing much," said Peter, lighting a cigarette. "Strathbane says it's an overdose. The boy's parents will be along sometime to take away his stuff"

"Do you know if they found any drugs in the chalet?"

"Aye, they found a wee bit o' heroin."

"I'll just take a stroll into the village myself and have a cup of tea. Good idea. If you see Parry, tell him I'll be back."

Hamish walked through the rain to the village, which consisted of a small huddle of houses. There was no shop, the locals all driving to Lochdubh to do their shopping. But there was a tearoom run by a Miss Black, an incomer, English. She had set up her tearoom in what had once been the village store. As she provided strong tea and very good cakes and biscuits, she had built up a regular trade among the locals as well as people in other towns and villages in Sutherland, many driving in from as far away as Lairg.

As Miss Black had bought the village shop for very little and acted as baker and waitress, a complete one-woman operation, she managed to make a modest living.

She was an energetic old lady. Gossip had it she was a retired schoolteacher. Unlike a lot of incomers, life in the northern Highlands of Scotland obviously suited her. Hamish judged her to be almost seventy but she had very good skin and pink cheeks. Her snowy white hair was arranged in a simple style. She wore an ankle-length tartan skirt, a tartan waistcoat and a white frilly blouse.

The cafe was empty. "The weather's keeping everyone away but the police," she said when Hamish walked in. "What can I get you?"

"Tea and two of your scones and butter, please," said Hamish, taking off his oilskin and hanging it on a hook by the door. "Dreich weather."

"It is, indeed. I gather you're here because of that poor young man."

"Yes."

"So sad. I'd never have thought he would do a thing like that and him so happy with his young lady."

Hamish sat down at a table and looked at her curiously. "I didn't know he had a young lady."

"That little girl who lives at Parry's chalets. Felicity, that's it."

"I was led to understand, I don't know why, that they weren't that close."

"I thought they were in love, the way they were giggling and laughing together. Now, I'll get your tea."

Felicity had definitely said that she didn't know Tommy very well, that they were just neighbours. Why had she lied?

A group of wet tourists came in, chattering and laughing. Miss Black served Hamish and then went to attend to them. He ate his scones and drank his tea.

Half his brain was yelling at him to leave well alone. It was an accidental death. But the other half was fretting about Felicity.