M.C. Beaton - Death of a Dustman

Hamish backed away to the door and took out his phone and called Strathbane.

Then he sat down in the sunshine outside to wait. He could not bear to go back inside the house.

♦

By evening, Kirsty’s body had been removed, Hamish had typed up his statement in the police station and sent it to Strathbane. In the letter to Elspeth, Kirsty had left the croft house to her.

Lugs came in and put a paw on Hamish’s knee.

“Who are you?” asked Hamish, looking down at the dog. Then he shook his head as if to clear the nonsense out of it. Some of the locals still believed that the dead came back as seals. He was getting as nutty as they were.

But he sat there a long time, thinking of the hell that had been Kirsty’s life.

“What a waste,” he muttered. “What a waste.”

A voice called from the kitchen. “Anybody home?”

Priscilla!

He leapt to his feet and went through to find her standing there, smiling at him.

She was wearing an impeccably tailored trouser suit, and not one hair on her blonde head was out of place.

“I thought you were in Milton Keynes.”

“That job’s finished. Care for that dinner we never got around to?”

Only for a moment did he hesitate. Only for a moment did his mind warn him against opening up old wounds. Who was it who had said, ‘There are no new wounds. Only old wounds reopened’?

But every minute of life was surely for living, for any enjoyment one could get. Seize the moment.

“Be with you in a minute,” said Hamish Macbeth. “I’ll just change out of my uniform.”