"I never heard a thing about it," said Hamish, his mind racing. Relatives, however far away, always phoned the local police station.

"I had a letter," said Jenny drearily. "It came yesterday."

"I am verra sorry," said Hamish awkwardly. "Is there anything I can do?"

"Just talk to me."

"I think it's yourself that needs to do the talking," said Hamish.

Jenny gave a weak smile. "I'm being silly," she said. "I never liked my sister. We're not very much alike. It was the shock, that's all."

"And will you be going to Canada for the funeral?"

"No point." Jenny shrugged. "We're not a close family."

"What did she die of?"

"Look, Hamish Macbeth, it's over and done with. I don't want to talk about it. Now, have a drink and tell me about your witch-hunt."

She produced a bottle of Barsac, a sweet dessert wine from the fridge, opened it, and poured it into two water gla.s.ses.

"Do you often drink this stuff?" asked Hamish, wrinkling his nose.

"What's up with it? It's a drink, isn't it? I forget when I bought it. Oh, I remember. It was last year. It was for some recipe. It's been in the fridge ever since."

A fat tear rolled down her cheek and splashed into be gla.s.s.

Hamish decided to do what he'd been told and chattered on nervously about the fake a.s.sault, about how Diarmuk Sinclair was slowly coming out of his sh.e.l.l, about the difficulty of getting any information at all out of the locals.

She drank and listened and seemed soothed. Hamish finally felt he could not talk any longer. He got to his feet. "I'll be off to my bed, Jenny," he said. "Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow, if it is all right with you."

"Sure. I'll be here." She came round the kitchen table and stood in front of him, her head bent. "You don't need to go," she said.

"Whit? "

"Stay the night...with me," said Jenny.

Hamish bent and kissed her cheek. "It wouldna' work," he said softly. "Not when you're this miserable. I'd be someone tae cling to the night, and someone to hate in the morning."

Jenny remained standing, her head still bent.

Hamish turned and walked away and let himself out in the night.

Hamish's first visitor early next morning was Jamie Ross. "I don't know whether I'm doin' the right thing or not," said Jamie. "I got back last night and found everything in order, but no sign of Sandy. I went out to his place, but there was no one home."

"Maybe he's indoors, dead drunk, and cannae hear you," said Hamish.

"No, the door wasn't locked. I took a look inside. He's gone all right, but his Land Rover's still there. I'm wondering whether to report him missing."

"It's early days," said Hamish. "Had he been drinking?"

"Well, that's what worries me. He had. Worse than that, he told Hector at The Clachan that I had kindly left a gla.s.s of booze for him on one of the tanks. I wouldn't dream of doing a thing like that. Hector said he was drinking himself silly. I got mad and asked why no one had stopped him. But far from stopping him, the locals seem to have gone out of their way to buy him drinks."

"Why would they do that?"

"Jealousy," said Jamie simply. "You know what they're like around here. They don't like me showing I have any money at all. You're supposed to be like the crofters and plead poverty. That's why a lot of these crofters don't buy their land, you know. They could force the landowner to sell it to them for a song, but then that'd mean they'd need to pa.s.s a means test in order to get the government grants, and not one of them could pa.s.s it. Sandy's a good soul when he's not drinking. I'd hate to see him have an accident. It would be just like him to wander off and fall asleep somewhere and die of exposure. Besides, I owed him the second half of his wages and it's strange he didn't turn up to collect. He went away and left the office locked up and took the key with him. I had to break in."

"I'll have a look around," said Hamish. "So you think someone deliberately left that drink so as Sandy would go on drinking, once started?"

"Aye, sheer spite."

"I'll do my best. How was the wedding?"

"Oh, just grand. Everything went off like clockwork. They're off to the Canary Islands on their honeymoon."

When Jamie left, Hamish washed his breakfast dishes and prepared to go out to look for Sandy Carmichael. He was on the point of leaving when Jenny arrived, looking shamefaced.

"Thanks for last night," she said awkwardly. "I wasn't myself."

"That's all right," said Hamish. "I was just on my road out. Jamie Ross says that Sandy Carmichael is missing. But there's time for a coffee. You wouldn't happen to know if Sandy's ever gone missing before?"

"Not that I know. Drunk or sober, he always hangs about the town. Oh, here's Mrs. Mainwaring," said Jenny, spotting a ma.s.sive figure pa.s.sing the kitchen window. "I wonder what she wants."

Hamish went through to the police station annex in time to open the door to Mrs. Mainwaring.

She was wearing a squashed felt hat and a waxed coat over a navy dress with a white sailor collar, a photograph of which had appeared several months ago in one of the Sunday colour supplements: "Order now. Special offer. Flattering to the fuller figure." A strong smell of peppermint and whisky blasted into Hamish's face as she cried, "William is missing. He hasn't been home for two nights!"

"Come in, Mrs. Mainwaring," said Hamish. "Sit yourself down." Jenny came through and stood in the office doorway. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Mr. Mainwaring is missing," said Hamish. "Look, Mrs. Mainwaring, has he done this before?"

"No, never. I mean, yes, he has, but he's always told me or left a note."

"And where does he go?"

"Glasgow or Edinburgh. He likes to go to the theatre."

"Alone?"

"Yes, of course."

Hamish thought that William Mainwaring might possibly have a mistress in Glasgow or Edinburgh-either that or be staying away out of sheer malice. "I think you should give it a little more time," he said soothingly. "He'll be back."

Jenny came forward and stood with her hand on Mrs. Mainwaring's shoulder. "And I think you ought to look for him," she said sharply. "Can't you see how distressed Mrs. Mainwaring is?"

"All right," said Hamish reluctantly. "I've got to look for Sandy Carmichael, so I may as well look for Mr. Mainwaring at the same time."

Ian Gibb was a budding reporter. He was on the dole, but he scoured the countryside in the hope of a good story. Occasionally one of the Scottish newspapers used a short piece from him, but he dreamt of having a scoop, a story that would hit the London papers.

That day, his sights were lower. With all the fuss about the decline in educational standards, he had decided to write a feature on Cnothan School. The school was run on the lines of an old-fashioned village school. It taught all ages up to university level. Educational standards were high and discipline was strict. Teachers wore black academic gowns in the cla.s.sroom and mortar-boards on speech days. The headmaster, John Finch, was an aging martinet, the type of headmaster of whom people approve after they have left school and do not have to endure being taught by such a rigid personality themselves.

The headmaster had agreed to see him, but, true to his type, planned to keep Ian kicking his heels outside the headmaster's study for a full quarter of an hour.

Ian was moodily wishing he could light up a cigarette. He was sitting on a hard bench with his back against the wall. But after five minutes of waiting, he was joined by a teenage girl. "Hallo," said Ian cheerfully. "In trouble?"

"Oh, no," said the girl. "I am one of the school prefects, and Mrs. Billings, the English teacher, has sent me along to report that two of the girls are misbehaving in cla.s.s. I'll wait till you're finished."

"Maybe you'd better go first," said Ian, feeling disappointed in this girl, whose Highland beauty had initially charmed him. There was something cold-bloodedly precise about her manner. "I'll be a while. I'm interviewing Mr. Finch for my newspaper."

"Which newspaper is that?"

Ian didn't have a newspaper, being a free lance. He only hoped one of them would take his education article. But he said, "The Scotsman," hoping to impress.

"Oh, that's why he's seeing you," said the girl sedately. "The Scotsman's a good paper. I didn't think he'd want to see a reporter, mind. I thought he would call it sensationalism."

"What? Education?"

"No, the witchcraft story."

Ian stiffened. "Oh yes, that," he said casually, although it was the first he had heard of it, as he lived in Domoch. "Bad business."

"I don't approve of it myself," said the girl primly. "But there's no doubt in anyone's mind the Mainwarings were asking for it."

There came a commotion from the end of the corridor, Ian took out a small notebook, and as the girl turned her head away, he rapidly scribbled down 'Mainwaring.' A hara.s.sed, middle-aged woman came along the corridor, dragging two weeping six-year-olds. She saw the girl and said, "Gemma, was there ever such a business! These two brats were supposed to be off school with the flu. Now they say they were playing up on the moors and there's a skeleton in the middle of that ring of standing stones."

She knocked sharply on the door of the headmaster's study, and, without waiting for a reply, she went in, dragging the weeping children behind her.

Ian pressed his ear against the panels of the door, "Here!" cried the girl called Gemma. "You cannae do that. I'll tell on you!"

"Go tell," snarled Ian over his shoulder, and then he listened hard.

By the time Hamish Macbeth arrived at the ring of standing stones, there was already quite a large crowd gathered. His police Land Rover had been stopped by other cars and pedestrians, all crying to him about the skeleton up on the moors.

The crowd parted to let him through. The skeleton lay in all its horrible whiteness under a bleak windy sky.

Hamish walked forward and knelt down by the skeleton. The whiteness of the bone depressed him. He had been hoping it would turn out to be another joke, that it would prove to be a skeleton used by medical students, but this one was too new.

"I'm Dr. Brodie," said a red-haired man, coming up to join him. "Is this a joke?"

"I hope so," said Hamish. "But I don't think so. What do you make of it?"

The doctor knelt down beside him and took out a strong magnifying gla.s.s. "I've no doubt the pathologist will tell us soon enough, but I'm baffled." He raised the skull gently and lay down with his head on the ground and peered at the back of it. "Aye," he murmured, "whoever it was had his neck broken. It'll come away in your hands if you're not careful. And see here..." He pointed to the left arm bone. "There's tiny scratches all over the bone."

"Acid?"

"No, definitely not acid." He sat back on his heels. "Mainwaring's missing, isn't he?"

"Aye," said Hamish, "and Sandy Carmichael. Teeth. What about teeth?"

The doctor peered at the skull. "None at all," he said gloomily. "Can't be Carmichael. I happen to know he had his own teeth. I don't know about Mainwaring. He never consulted me. Went to some doctor in Edinburgh."

Hamish glanced round anxiously at the swelling crowd. "I'll need help," he said urgently. "While I phone, you pick out the most reliable from the crowd and get them to find ropes and groundsheets. I want the whole place roped off and groundsheets over as much of the area surrounded by the stones as you can manage."

When Hamish returned after using the car phone in the Land Rover, the doctor and his helpers were busy spreading tarpaulins over the turf.

Hamish's heart was beating hard. After that business on Clacham Mohr, he had hoped never to be the b.u.t.t of a practical joke again, but he found he was praying that this would turn out to be one. But the sky was dark and windy and his Highland soul felt menace in the very air.

He took out his notebook and began to make rapid shorthand notes.

Then he was approached by a group of men and women-reporters from the Northern Times, Highland Times, Moray Firth Radio, and the Ross-shire Journal, all clamouring to know about witchcraft in Cnothan.

His heart sank. It was like a bad dream. He knew that the Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers would soon follow, then the television teams, then the London newspaper and television reporters. But, worst of all-once more he would be working for Detective Chief Inspector Blair of Strathbane.

Ian Gibb had found his scoop at last.

FIVE.

What makes life dreary is the want of motive. What makes life dreary is the want of motive. -George Eliot -George Eliot The circus came to town. All of it. The television crews with cables twisting like black snakes, the reporters, the feature writers, the photographers, the forensic team, squads of policemen to search for clues, and the fat, pompous figure of Chief Detective Inspector Blair among the lot.

Blair was determined to solve this case all on his own, without his thunder being stolen by that lanky village idiot, Hamish Macbeth, and so he told Hamish to 'run along' and keep the gentlemen of the press in order.

Hamish derived much bitter amus.e.m.e.nt from the spectacle of the press trying to winkle a comment out of the taciturn locals. It was Diarmuid Sinclair of all people who broke the ice. Driven out of Cnothan in the search of a friendlier interviewee, Grampian Television had come across Diarmuid in his fields. Since he had started to talk to Hamish Macbeth, there was no stopping Diarmuid. He talked and talked. He told fantastic Highland stories of witchcraft in Cnothan. He even said he believed there was a coven of witches in the town.

Diarmuid burst upon the six o'clock news and caused emerald-green jealousy in Cnothan. By evening the press were almost besieged by locals dying to be interviewed.

Hamish felt restless. Blair and his sidekicks, detectives Jimmy Anderson and Harry MacNab, were cluttering up the police station, and one of the forensic team had commandeered the Land Rover. Hamish put Towser on the leash and ambled down to The Clachan. He felt if he could find the whereabouts of Sandy Carmichael, he might find the whereabouts of William Mainwaring and the ident.i.ty of the skeleton. Mrs. Mainwaring had tearfully confirmed her husband had false teeth, but it was hard to think of the means by which Mainwaring could have been reduced to bare bones so quickly.

It was pitch-black although it was only four in the afternoon, and the endless screaming wind of Sutherland was tearing at his clothes. The bar was closed but he could see a light inside and hammered on the door. After a wait of a few minutes, it was opened by Hector Gunn. "Mair questions," he groaned when he saw Hamish. "If it isnae the press, it's the polis. Come in." Hamish went into the bar, which smelled of stale beer and strong disinfectant, with Towser at his heels.

"I want to know what happened when Sandy Carmichael was in here on Sat.u.r.day evening," said Hamish.

"Nothing happened. He drank himself stupid, that's all."

"The man is a known alcoholic. Didn't you think buying him drinks was a form o' murder?" said Hamish.

"Och, I wouldnae say he was an alcoholic. Jist ower-fond o' his dram."