A Highland Christmas (2 page)

He wearily returned to the croft house and knocked on the door. Again he waited and called out ‘Police’ in answer to her sharp demand to know who was there. ‘Have you got a
photo of the cat?’ he called. After some time, the door opened on the chain. She handed a photograph to him. ‘I want a receipt,’ she said. He wrote out a receipt and went on his
way.

The next day, Hamish forgot about the cat. He had a more important burglary to investigate in a neighbouring village.

Cnothan, less rigid on the subject of Christmas than Lochdubh, had planned to decorate its main street with fairy lights. Now they were gone. He set out, enjoying the faint glow from a red sun
which shone low on the hills. All was still after the gales of the day before. Smoke rose up from cottage chimneys in straight lines. The waters of the sea loch were flat and still, one great
mirror reflecting the clouds and mountains above.

Hamish did not like Cnothan, the least friendly place in the Highlands. He marvelled that Cnothan of all places should want to brighten the place up with lights. He went to the home of the
chairman of the parish council, a Mr Sinclair, who had reported the burglary. The door was opened by Mrs Sinclair who told him he would find her husband at his shop in the main street. The shop, it
turned out, sold electrical goods. Hamish grinned. Nothing like Highland enterprise when it came to making money.

Mr Sinclair was a smooth, pompous man. There is not much of a pecking order in the north of Scotland and so often the shopkeeper is head of the social world. He had an unlined olive face,
despite his age which Hamish judged to be around fifty. His unnaturally black hair was combed straight back and oiled.

‘Was the shop burgled?’ asked Hamish, looking around.

‘No, we didnae have the lights here,’ said Mr Sinclair. ‘They were kept in a shed up by the community hall.’

‘Maybe you’d better take me there.’

‘You’ll need to wait until I’m closed for lunch. This is my busiest season.’

Hamish looked around the empty shop. ‘Doesn’t look busy now.’

‘Temporary lull. Temporary lull.’

Hamish looked at his watch. Ten to one. Oh, well, only ten minutes to wait. Sod’s law, he thought bitterly as a woman came in at exactly two minutes to one and started asking about washing
machines.

It was quarter past one before she finished asking questions and left without buying anything. ‘I hate that sort of woman,’ grumbled Mr Sinclair after he had locked up and led the
way up the main street at a brisk trot. ‘I think they come in just to pass the time. Here we are.’

The door of the shed was open. A smashed padlock lay on the ground. ‘Did they take anything other than the lights?’ asked Hamish.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Sinclair. ‘They took the big Christmas tree as well.’

‘Och, man, someone must hae seen someone carrying a great big tree!’

‘You can ask. I’ve asked. Has anyone seen a thing? No.’

Hamish squatted down and studied the ground. ‘There’s no dragging marks,’ he said. ‘Must have been more than one o’ them. How big was the tree?’

‘About eight feet.’

‘Aye, well, one man would ha’ dragged it. So it was several of them. And no one saw them. So it stands to reason they must have gone up the back way.’ He stood up and looked
down at Mr Sinclair from his greater height. ‘I never heard afore that the folks of Cnothan wanted anything to do with Christmas.’

‘I was elected chairman of the council this year and I managed to persuade them. I was backed by the minister. We took up a collection.’

‘And your shop supplied the lights?’

‘Yes. Do you mind if I get home for something to eat?’

‘You run along. I’ll let you know if I find out anything.’

Behind the community hall, Hamish noticed common grazing land. There was a gate leading into it. Hamish bent down again. There were little bits of fir needles on the ground. So they had gone
this way. Where to? Who would want to take a Christmas tree and lights?

After searching around some more, he went into a café and ordered a sausage roll and a cup of coffee. The roll was greasy and the coffee, weak. He approached the slattern who ran the
café and asked, ‘Are there folks in Cnothan who were against having Christmas lights in the main street?’

She blinked at him through the steam from a pot on the cooker behind her. With her wild unkempt hair, her thin face and red eyes, she looked like one of the witches who had appeared to the other
Macbeth.

‘Aye, there’s some o’ those,’ she said.

‘Like who?’

‘Like Hugh McPhee. He went on and on about them.’

‘And where can I find him?’

‘Down at the fishing shop by the loch.’

At the bottom of the main street lay the loch, one of those products of the hydro-electricity board. Hamish could remember his mother telling him about how people had been moved out of their
villages to make way for these artificial lochs. But they had all been promised that water power would mean cheap electricity and only found out too late that the resultant electricity was not
cheap at all. There was a drowned village under Loch Cnothan at the far end. There was something dismal about these man-made stretches of water, he reflected. There weren’t any of the trees
and bushes around them that you found in the natural ones. At one end of the loch was a great ugly dam. The sun was already going down when Hamish reached Mr McPhee’s shop.

Mr McPhee sat like a gnome behind the counter of his dark shop among fishing tackle.

Hamish explained the purpose of his visit. ‘So what’s it got to do with me?’ asked Mr McPhee. He was a small gnarled man with arthritic hands.

‘I heard you were against the whole business o’ the lights,’ said Hamish.

‘’Course I was. It was that man, Sinclair. Get’s hisself elected tae the council and afore you know it, he’s got an order for the lights.’

‘So you weren’t objecting on religious grounds?’

‘No, you’ll need tae go tae Bessie Ward for that. She says the lights are the devil’s beacons.’

‘And where will I find her?’

‘Her cottage is at the top o’ the main street. It’s called Crianlarich.’

‘Right, I’ll try her.’

Back up the main street. It was bitter cold and the light was fading fast. He found a small bungalow with the legend CRIANLARICH done in pokerwork on a small wooden board hung over the door on
two chains.

He rang the doorbell, which played a parody of Big Ben.

‘What is it? Is it my sister, Annie?’ asked a solid-looking matron on seeing a uniformed policeman.

‘No, nothing like that,’ said Hamish soothingly. ‘I am asking questions about the missing Christmas lights.’

‘Whoever did it was doing the work of the Lord,’ she said. ‘You’d best come in.’

Hamish followed her into a highly disciplined living room. Church magazines on a low table were arranged in neat squares. Brass objects on the mantel glittered and shone. Cushions were plumped
up. Against the outside streetlights, the windows sparkled. The room was cold.

Hamish took off his cap and balanced it on his knees. ‘I am asking various prominent residents of Cnothan if they might have any idea who did it,’ began Hamish.

‘I neither know nor care.’ Mrs Ward sat down opposite him. Her tight tweed skirt rucked up over her thick legs, showing the embarrassed Hamish support hose ending in long pink
knickers, those old-fashioned kind with elastic at the bottoms. ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways,’ she added sententiously

Hamish was about to point out that the Lord did not break padlocks but did not want to offend her. ‘You look like a verra intelligent woman tae me,’ he said. Mrs Ward preened and a
coquettish look appeared in her eyes as she surveyed the tall policeman with the hazel eyes and flaming red hair. ‘Have there be any strangers around here?’

‘There’s some come and go for the forestry. It’s all the fault of that awful man, Sinclair. You know the reason he forced through the collection for the lights? Because he sold
them.’

‘But if there was enough in the collection for the lights,’ said Hamish, ‘it follows that some of the people here want them.’

‘I blame the incomers,’ she snapped. ‘Godless lot.’

Hamish did not bother asking who the incomers were. She probably meant people who had settled in Cnothan during the last twenty years. Once a newcomer, always a newcomer. That’s the way
things were in Cnothan. And you never really got to know anyone in Cnothan. In other villages, he called in at houses on his beat for a chat. He had never dared make an unofficial call on anyone in
Cnothan. He surmised that such a respectable house-proud matron would not have anything to do with a theft. He was suddenly anxious to take his leave. But Mrs Ward pressed him to stay for tea and
he weakly agreed.

After he left, he took in great gulps of fresh air outside. He felt he had been trapped in that glittering living room forever. He decided to go back to Lochdubh.

In friendly Lochdubh where everyone gossiped freely, he would have more chance of picking up news of any strangers in the area. He was sure it was the work of strangers. Surely even the most
rabid Calvinist would not stoop to crime.

Back in Lochdubh, he parked the Land Rover and walked along to the doctor’s cottage. Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife, answered the door to him. ‘Come in, Hamish,’ she
said, putting a wisp of hair back from her thin face. ‘I’m just decorating the Christmas tree.’

‘I’m glad someone in Lochdubh has a Christmas tree,’ remarked Hamish.

‘Come on, Hamish, you know a lot of us have them behind closed doors.’ She led the way into the cluttered sitting room. The tree was half decorated and Angela’s cats were
having a great game swiping at the brightly coloured glass balls with their paws. Angela gave a cluck of annoyance and scooped up the cats and carried them out to the kitchen.

‘So what have you been up to?’ she asked when she returned.

Hamish told her about the theft of the Cnothan lights.

‘There was a lot of feeling against having the lights by some of the older residents,’ said Angela. ‘Might not one of them have taken them?’

‘No, I don’t think so. You see a large Christmas tree was taken as well. If someone wanted to stop the lights and tree being put up for religious reasons, then they’d probably
have smashed the lights and chopped up the tree. Someone’s probably down in the streets of Inverness or somewhere like that trying to sell them. In fact, when I get back to the police
station, I’ll phone the police in Inverness and Strathbane and ask them to keep a lookout for the missing lights.’

Hamish passed a pleasant hour helping Angela with the decorations and then went back to the police station. He went into the office and played back the messages on the answering machine. There
was a curt one from the bane of his life, Detective Chief Inspector Blair, asking him to phone immediately on his return.

Hamish rang police headquarters and was put through to Blair.

‘Listen, pillock,’ said Blair with all his usual truculence, ‘there’s some auld biddie in your neck o’ the woods, a Mrs Gallagher.’

‘What about her? She’s only missing a cat.’

‘Well, find the damn animal. She’s complained about you, right to Superintendent Daviot. Says you’re lazy and neglecting your duties. Says you’re a disgrace to community
policing.’

Hamish sighed. Community policing were the current buzzwords at Strathbane.

‘So you get out there and find that cat dead or alive.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes,
what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hamish rang off. He decided to eat first and then tackle the horrible Mrs Gallagher again.

An hour and a half later, he knocked once more at Mrs Gallagher’s cottage. Frost was glittering on the grass round about and his breath came out in white puffs.

He waited patiently while the locks were unlocked and the bolts were drawn back.

She let him in. He was about to have words with her for having made trouble for him at headquarters, but he noticed she had been crying and his face softened.

‘Look, Mrs Gallagher,’ he said gently, ‘I was not neglecting my duties. But you must know what it’s like. The cat could be anywhere. And why would anyone break in and
steal a cat? And how could anyone break in with all the locks and bolts you have? You even have bolts on the windows.’

‘Someone did,’ she said stubbornly.

‘Have you ever been burgled afore?’

‘No, never.’

‘So why all the locks and bolts?’

‘There’s a lot of evil people around. And unintelligent ones, too. If you had any intelligence, you wouldn’t still be a policeman.’

‘I choose to stay a policeman,’ said Hamish, ‘and if you expected that remark to hurt, it didn’t.’ It was amazing how little anyone knew of Mrs Gallagher, he
reflected, even though she had been in Lochdubh longer than himself. But then she was damned as a nasty old woman and that was that. It must be a lonely life and she had been crying over the loss
of her cat.

‘Let’s start again, Mrs Gallagher,’ he said firmly, ‘and stop the insults or we won’t get anywhere. The mystery here, and it iss where I would like to start, is why
you bar and bolt yourself in and why you should immediately think that someone had broken in.’

She sat very still, her red work-worn hands folded on her aproned lap. ‘Can’t you just find Smoky?’ she pleaded at last.

‘I’m giving a talk at the school tomorrow and I’ll ask the children if they’ll help me to look for Smoky. School’s nearly finished. But you have not yet answered my
question.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘Who iss it you are afraid of, Mrs Gallagher?’

She studied him for a long moment with those odd silver eyes of hers. Then she said abruptly, ‘Will you be taking a dram with me?’

‘Aye, that would be grand.’

A flash of humour lit her eyes. ‘I thought you didn’t drink on duty.’

‘Only on a cold winter’s night,’ said Hamish.

She went to a handsome dresser against the wall and took out two glasses and a bottle of malt whisky. She poured two generous measures, gave him one and then sat back down in her chair, cradling
her glass.