M.C. Beaton: Death of a Witch

“Wait a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”

Hamish waited and waited. At last Jimmy came back on the line. “Can’t do anything, Hamish. There’s a big drug bust tomorrow and Blair says he needs all the men he can get.”

“But these men are armed!”

“All I can suggest is that you keep close to your station and don’t try to go after them yourself. Look, as soon as this drug business is over, I’ll come myself with as many men as I can get.”

♦

The next day Hamish was determined not to let fear of the poachers trap him in his police station. Just in case they came calling at the station, he left the dog and cat with Angela, explaining that he did not want to return home and find them shot.

He debated whether to round up some of the local men to help him in the search but decided against it. If one of them got shot in the hunt, he would never forgive himself. He had phoned Jimmy again, who had said Blair still refused to send any men. With his deer rifle beside him, he set out, driving up and over the hills, stopping occasionally at croft houses to ask if anyone had seen the two men.

The weather was mild with the first hint of spring, and the snow was melting rapidly. Burns were in full spate, tumbling down the hillsides, their peaty gold water flashing in the sun.

He searched bothies and outhouses for any sign of where they might have spent the night. The bothy he was sure they had been staying in was deserted. He was glad when night fell, feeling always that the scope of a rifle held by someone up on the hills was trained on him.

Hamish phoned Jimmy and asked him to send over photographs of the two men. When they arrived, he printed copies of them and went out and stuck them up on the lampposts along the waterfront.

That evening he carried an armchair from his living room and set it against the kitchen door. Then he slept in it, fully dressed, with his rifle at his side. He awoke briefly during the night, feeling pins and needles in his legs.

By morning he felt dirty and gritty and he was in a foul mood. It was more than likely that the poachers were not after him but simply hiding out from the police.

Nonetheless, he went out searching again, without success. The sun was warm; it was as if the blizzards had never happened and all the misery that Catriona had brought to the village was rapidly disappearing in the clear light.

When he went back to the village and was making his way to Angela’s house to pick up his animals again he saw a rare sight. Archie Maclean and his wife were walking hand in hand along the waterfront. Other couples were strolling along either holding hands as well or with their arms around each other’s waists.

“What’s happening?” Hamish asked Angela when she answered the door to him. “Has romance come to Lochdubh or is there another witch around selling love potions?”

“It’s pretty awful. Haven’t you seen the newspaper? It’s that cursed Perry.”

Hamish followed her into the kitchen. She handed him a newspaper folded over at a feature and said, “Read that.”

The headline was enough for Hamish. WE DON’T DO SEX IN LOCHDUBH. Underneath was a smaller headline: WAS IT FRUSTRATED SEX THAT CAUSED THE LOCHDUBH MURDERS?

Hamish ran his eyes over the piece. It mentioned the fact that even the village constable was celibate.

The Currie sisters were quoted as saying, “We don’t go in for any nastiness like that round here.”

Hamish checked the other quotes, and his eyes narrowed. “There’s a lot wrong here, Angela. I have a feeling that he asked the Currie sisters, for example, if they went in for S and M in the village. He put down replies but omitted the questions.”

Hamish phoned Elspefh. When she came on the line, he said, “Thon was a malicious piece of writing from Perry.”

“Maybe it was because he was disappointed in love,” said Elspeth. “Fancied you, didn’t he?”

“Cut that out. Do you know if he taped those interviews?”

“He taped everything. He doesn’t know any shorthand.”

“Can you get me the tape?”

“He’d know it was me if I took it.”

“Do you think he ever leaves it in his car?”

“I think he keeps it in the glove compartment when he’s not working.”

“So break into his car and pinch it. Pinch the car if necessary.”

“Why should I?”

Hamish took a deep breath. “This is a rotten malicious piece of reporting and you know it. Do you want someone like that on the staff?”

There was a long silence and then Elspeth said reluctantly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

♦

Elspeth flicked through a notebook she kept in her desk with the names of various villains. Sonny Turner had recently finished doing time for stealing cars. She made a note of his address and after work made her way to a house in Clydebank.

Sonny recognised her as a reporter he had seen on the press benches in the high court and tried to close the door.

Elspeth put her foot in the door and held up a fifty-pound note. “I’m writing an article on car theft. I know you’re clean but I want a bit of advice.”

He nipped the note from her fingers and then opened the door wide.

“Come in, petal,” he said. “You’ve come tae the right man.”

♦

Elspeth knew that Perry lived in a cul-de-sac off Great Western Road. She drove there at four in the morning. Perry’s BMW was parked on the road outside.

She crouched down by the car and assembled her kit – a wooden door wedge, a metal wire coat hanger, and a hammer.

Following Sonny’s instructions, she broke into the car. The alarm shrilled. With a beating heart she dived into the car and, as per instructions, locked the door, unlocked it, opened the door from the inside, and hit the kill switch on the underside of the dashboard.

The alarm fell silent. She peered up at the windows. Not a single light showed. People were used to faulty car alarms. She opened the glove compartment and seized Perry’s small tape recorder. Then to make it look like a real burglary, she took his radio and CD player as well.

She let herself out of the car, stuffed the stolen goods and her equipment back into a travel bag, and scurried off to where she had parked her own car.

Back in her own apartment, she switched on the tape recorder and ran it back to the Lochdubh interviews. It was as Hamish had expected. The Currie sisters were asked whether the women of the village liked to dress up as fantasy figures, nurses or little girls, to excite their husbands.

Mrs. Wellington had been asked if she ever wore leather in bed or had used a vibrator.

“The sexual practises you are talking about are filth,” Mrs. Wellington had said.

But her reply as published in the article had appeared as, “All sex is filth.”

The other interviews were on the same tricky lines. Various villagers had been asked about Hamish’s love life and the replies had been mostly the same – that he did not have a girlfriend at the moment. Nothing about him being celibate.

Elspeth felt the fury rise in her. Poor innocent Lochdubh, held up to ridicule.

Wearing the thin gloves she had donned for the burglary, she typed out a note to the news desk at Scottish Television and packed up the tape recorder and the original article.

She addressed the package and then drove to Scottish Television wearing an old motorcycle helmet and leathers from the days when she had used a motorbike. She studied herself in the mirror. Nobody could tell in her disguise whether she was a man or a woman.

♦

Elspeth was sent to cover the high court the next day. A case of drug pushing dragged on and then was finally adjourned to the following day.

By the time she got back to the office, it was buzzing with the news of Perry’s sacking. Scottish Television had played the tape on the lunchtime news.