Кит Мори - Flotsam and Jetsam

‘That’s my hammer, right enough,’ Ewan said taking it gratefully. ‘It’s a beauty and I wouldn’t like to be without it. I’ll let you get on with your bird-watching then.’ He turned to go then turned back. ‘Are you the owners of a yellow camper-van parked down the road?’

‘We are. We are here for the wildlife, and it is full of all our cameras and telescopes. There’s nothing wrong is there? I thought it was OK to park there,’ the lean one said.

Ewan shook his head. ‘It’s OK parked there, but the off side rear tyre is getting a bit bare. You should see to that straight away. It is illegal as it is.’

‘We’ll deal with it straight away,’ the surly, stocky chap assured him.

Ewan nodded then left, taking a slightly circuitous route to avoid the line of the nest. But, as he headed down the track, he started wondering. He was not entirely sure that they had been watching the moor itself. From where they were, they could have been watching something or someone down in Kyleshiffin.

And he was not sure that he had ever heard of a red-crested moorhammer.

Calum had dashed up the stairs of the Chronicle offices upon finding that the front door had been forced open in their absence.

‘The beggars!’ he cried, as Cora darted up and joined him on the landing.

In every direction it was chaos. Piles of old newspapers had been cast everywhere. The camp-bed had been tipped over and the desk had been swept of everything except the heavy old Remington typewriter.

‘Who would do something like this?’ Cora asked.

‘The same folk who sent us on that wild goose chase to Largo Head,’ Calum replied sourly. ‘They dragged us away so that they could give the place the once over.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and gingerly pulled open the top drawer of a large grey filing cabinet. He grunted as he saw that his Glen Corlan whisky was still there, as was his old sporran in which he kept the petty cash. He stood looking round then shook his head. ‘No, nothing has been taken. It was just a bit of wanton damage.’

Cora patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Calum,’ she said in as cheery a voice as she could muster up. ‘I’ll have it ship-shape in no time.’ With which she bent down to start gathering the discarded newspapers.

But Calum grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. ‘Touch nothing, Cora!’ he ordered. ‘Whoever did this meant it as a serious message, believe me.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘When you’ve been a newsman as long as me you get an instinct for these things. We’ll need to get the police round. I’ll give my old mate Torquil McKinnon a bell in a minute.’

He reached into a voluminous pocket of his anorak and produced a small digital camera. ‘But before I do, I’ll just take a few pictures of the crime scene.’

‘For the police?’ Cora asked.

Calum shook his head. ‘No lass. For the Chronicle . I’ll write a piece straight away and it’ll go in the next edition. Always remember that the pen is mightier than the sword.’

Cora nodded appreciatively. ‘You are so right, Calum. You can humiliate them in print.’

The little newspaper editor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe, but I bet they’ll just have a good laugh.’ He shook his head and his jaw muscles tightened. ‘Perhaps I didn’t mean that exactly, about the pen being mightier than the sword. It would be more satisfying to shove a pen up their noses when I get hold of them.’

Alec Anderson drove his mobile shop-cum-Royal Mail van into the parking bay at the front of his shop at the end of Harbour Street. Like the van, the shop-front was painted cream and blue with a Royal Mail red canopy shading and sheltering the crates of fruit and vegetables, and the assortment of fishing rods, nets, beach balls, whirly-windmills and umbrellas that proclaimed that Anderson’s Emporium sold most of the things you would need on a West Uist holiday. To emphasize that, on one side of the door was a man-size figure of a kilted highlander licking an ice cream. This last accoutrement had been in the Anderson family’s possession, as had the shop, for three generations, although in recent years Alec had replaced the pipe the highlander had smoked for fifty years with a facsimile of the large ice creams that his emporium was famous for.

At his signature tune peep on the horn – a snatch of a hornpipe – a pretty auburn-haired woman popped out.

‘Hello, my wee darling Agnes,’ he called, jumping out of the van and hauling his mail bag after him.

‘Welcome home, love-bug,’ she replied, skipping to meet him and planting a big kiss on his cheek.

An elderly lady dressed in a cheesecloth dress with an ill-fitting panama hat, with a prodigiously large shoulder bag was just tying the leads of five dogs to a large ring in the wall. ‘Oh heavens! Don’t look, Zimba, Sheila and you young ones,’ she said, good-humouredly addressing a disdainful German shepherd, a zestful West Highland terrier and three boisterous collies. ‘The Andersons’ behaviour is enough to put me off my food, let alone you lot! Now, just you all keep your wheesht while I do my purchasing.’

She straightened and swung her shoulder bag into a more comfortable position, then she shook her head at the grinning couple who stood arm in arm regarding her with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment.

‘Och, we are sorry to offend you, Mrs McConville. ‘I haven’t seen Alec for a few hours and I just miss him when he isn’t here.’

‘As I do you, Agnes, my love.’

Annie McConville glanced heavenwards. ‘It is twenty years since I was widowed, but I cannot remember the lovey-dovey stuff lasting more than a few months, not how ever many years you two have been together. It isn’t natural, I am thinking.’

‘Seven years,’ Alec sighed. ‘And it is perfectly natural, Annie, I assure you. Natural for us at any rate. And we don’t mind showing our feelings.’

Annie gave a shudder then led the way into the shop. ‘Well, let me bring you down from your cloud and do business.’ She pointed to the shelf of pet food. ‘I will be needing three times my usual order of Shepherd’s Best for my hungry crowd. I have a dozen more at the moment and the number seems to be going up. It is criminal the way folk just abandon these poor creatures.’

Agnes went behind the counter and reached up for two double packs of dog food. She stacked them on the counter, then added another on top. ‘That is just what PC Ewan McPhee was saying a few minutes ago. He said that Torquil McKinnon brought a stray in this morning.’

Annie gave a plaintive sigh. ‘Oh deary me, that may be another wee doggie for my sanctuary I suppose.’

Agnes took Annie’s capacious shoulder bag and started loading it with the packs of Shepherd’s Best. ‘That’s going to be pretty heavy, I am afraid,’ she said. Then she smiled as Annie gave her the stern look of an independent woman. ‘But actually, Ewan gave me the impression that they plan to keep the dog. It sounds as if they have all taken to it at the police station.’

She shifted her glance from Annie’s bag to Alec’s mail bag. He had been standing listening to their exchange. ‘Whatever have you been doing this morning? That bag seems fuller than when you went on your round. You are supposed to deliver the mail you know.’

Her husband laughed. ‘As the Kyleshiffin sub-postmaster my job is to collect the mail as well as deliver it, as you well know, my heather bunch. And this collection is almost entirely from Guthrie Lovat – which you will already have guessed. It is his weekly postbag of things to all parts of the world.’