In this addition to a New York Times bestselling mystery series, Sergeant Hamish Macbeth—Scotland's most quick-witted but unambitious policeman—investigates the disappearance of a local woman who is more than she seems.
Kate Hibbert is all too eager to lend a hand to her neighbors. Although she has been a resident of the sleepy village of Lochdubh for only a year, in that time Kate has alienated one too many of its residents with her interfering—and not entirely well-intentioned—ways. When Kate’s neighbor sees her lugging a heavy suitcase to the bus stop, he hopes that the prying woman is gone for good. But two weeks later, Kate’s cousin arrives in town with the news that Kate has gone missing.
Hamish Macbeth is called in to investigate the disappearance, and soon he is befuddled by the discovery of Kate’s body, her suitcase . . . and the sneaking suspicion that Kate was someone much more sinister than she claimed.
Release date:
February 14, 2023
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
256
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Gregor Mackenzie gazed out over the hillside above Lochdubh, leaning on his cromach walking staff and admiring his sheep grazing contentedly in the late morning sunshine. On a day like today, he mused, with a blue sky and a light breeze breathing the freshest of air across the mountains, gently ruffling the heather in soft purple waves, Sutherland was surely the most beautiful place on the planet. His mood was buoyed by the sound, healthy condition of his flock. He was immensely proud of his prize-winning animals and had a fine selection of lambs almost ready for the big auction at Lairg in September, sure to fetch a handsome price. As though they could read his thoughts, several of the North Country Cheviots turned their white faces towards him, their pensive expressions filled with false wisdom. When Gregor’s border collie, Bonnie, pricked up her ears and raised her head, they immediately returned to their grazing.
“Ha!” Mackenzie let out a soft laugh and reached down to pat his dog. “It’s like they don’t want you to know what it is they’re thinking, lass. Truth be told, I doubt they’re ever thinking anything much.”
It was then that he spotted a movement far below on the track leading to the main road. He immediately recognised the pink coat and hat of Kate Hibbert, the woman who had moved into the glen more than a year before. Her cottage was little more than a hundred yards from his. She was perfectly outlined against the distant view of Lochdubh and she appeared to be struggling with a large suitcase, dragging it down the rutted track.
“Where’s that sly besom off to, eh, Bonnie?” Mackenzie reached into a battered knapsack, quickly laying a hand on his old binoculars without ever taking his eyes off the figure in pink further down the hill. No sooner had he fixed the woman in focus than she disappeared where the track dipped behind a heather-clad mound. He tutted, setting off down the hill to find a spot where he could catch sight of her again when she reappeared, Bonnie trotting at his heels. He’d heard nothing about Hibbert taking a holiday and his day was suddenly cheered by the thought that he might be rid of her for a couple of weeks. Wait, though—what if she were going for good? Man, he’d sink a dram or two of his best whisky to that thought as soon as he got home, no matter what his wife might say about him drinking in the afternoon.
Mackenzie stopped abruptly, his dog almost slamming straight into the backs of his legs. He looked down at the white, petal-like bracts and delicate purple flowers of the avern plants and took a detour off to his left. The avern, some called them cloudberries, marked the edge of boggy ground where he could easily sink up to his knee if he wasn’t careful. Once he had a view of the track and the road running along the lochside, he raised his binoculars again. The glasses had been part of the trouble the Hibbert woman had created between him and his wife, Clara. He’d always kept the binoculars for spotting otters, or maybe an osprey, out on the water but Hibbert had told Clara she’d seen him spying on the women aboard the tourist yachts that came into the loch in the summer. Well, on warm days they were in bikinis—sometimes even topless. What was so wrong with taking a wee peek? That, of course, wasn’t how Clara saw it.
He scanned the track and the road, waiting for Hibbert to reappear, musing over the problems she had caused. She’d interfered when it came to the peat. Clara had a fine, strong back on her and was well able to carry a sackload of peat down the brae to their cottage from where they cut it further up the hill. Hibbert had insisted on helping, always cheerful, always smiling but always bleating about what heavy work it was and how “poor Clara shouldn’t have to lug all that peat around.” Clara never complained, but Hibbert kept on about it until, in the end, he’d been forced to agree that Clara shouldn’t be carrying the peat and that he needed to do something about it. He bought Clara a peat barrow.
Even then, Hibbert gave him no peace. She was constantly round at their cottage, happily helping Clara to bring in the washing or clean the windows. She was forever drinking coffee, having lunch with Clara or happening to drop by just as they were about to sit down at teatime, making them feel obliged to invite her to share their evening meal. All the time, she was watching him, always looking for another chance to point out how he was failing his wife. When none came, she would conjure one up, saying things like, “That sofa’s seen better days, has it not, Gregor? Surely Clara deserves a new one?” Gregor hated Hibbert but, while she never claimed they were the best of friends, Clara tolerated her at first. As time went on, however, Gregor could plainly see that Clara was starting to find Hibbert about as welcome as a midge in the bedroom on a warm night.
Things came to a head when Clara arrived home from doing some shopping at Patel’s little supermarket down in Lochdubh to find the woman in their house, going through their mail and the old ledger where they kept their accounts.
“Aye, that was a grand day, Bonnie,” Gregor said softly, the binoculars pressed tight against his eyes. “We were rebuilding the dyke all the way up in the top pasture, weren’t we? We could hear Clara going mental even from there—such language as I’ve never before heard from her. She was right ashamed of the blasphemy afterwards. Attended the kirk every Sunday morning for a month. The bloody Hibbert woman steered well clear of us after that. But where has she got to now, eh?”
Mackenzie had a clear view of the track and the road but there was no sign of the woman in pink. Making his way down the slope, he took a look behind the mound that had obscured his view only to find the track deserted. He ran a hand over the greying stubble on his chin, shrugged and turned to head for home, itching to tell Clara he had seen that damned woman leaving their glen. With any luck, they’d heard the last of her.
Kate Hibbert was the furthest thing from Sergeant Hamish Macbeth’s mind as he stood close to a small crowd gathered on the shore of The Corloch, enjoying the morning sunshine and listening to a story he hadn’t heard since he was a child.
“You’ll neffer catch them now, John Mackay! They’re free from your evil clutches at last!” The old woman stood on a small, rocky island ten yards from the shore of The Corloch. Silhouetted in the moonlight, her shadow cast long upon the water, the woman pointed a crooked finger towards the loch, the ragged folds of her black cloak hanging from her outstretched arm. “They’ll be in Sutherland territory afore an hour has passed. The Gordons will welcome them there, and you dare not follow.”
The three men on the shore stared out across the water to where a man and a woman were making their way steadily across the loch in a small boat. A ripple of water could be heard echoing over the surface each time the young man heaved on his paddle, yet they were still close enough for the three men to make out the pale, frightened face of the young woman staring back at them.
“Damn you, Mary! You gave them your boat!” raged the leader of the three. Each of them was barefoot, as they generally were come rain or shine, and dressed in a heavy plaid wrapped around the body, with a generous length draped over one shoulder, all held fast at the waist by a broad, leather belt. Each of them also carried a long, heavy sword, the steel blades glinting in the pale light.
“Just as you knew I would,” the old woman cackled. “Don’t try to pretend otherwise. It’s all part of your plan.”
“What’s she talking about, John?” asked one of the other men, stepping forward. His beard and long hair were as dark as his leader’s. “What plan?”
“She’s raving, Jamie,” scoffed the first man. “You hear that, Mary? You’re raving mad. Don’t you know who that is in yon boat? He’s Malcolm Gordon, the son of a Sutherland laird, and the girl is Eilidh Mackay, daughter of our own laird. The laddie has been held hostage these past five years in order to keep the peace between us Mackays and the Gordons. Don’t you realise what you’ve done? There will be no peace now!”
“Peace?” howled the woman, with a strength of voice that seemed alien to her frail, thin frame. “Don’t you lecture me about peace! The boy was neffer kept as a guarantee of peace. He was held hostage so that the Mackays could raid Sutherland, stealing cattle and causing havoc wi’ no fear of reprisal! Now perhaps we’ll see real peace at last!”
“You auld witch!” roared the third man. Even with the moonlight softening the foliage and the trunks of the ancient oak and birch trees to a misty grey, his hair and beard glowed a fearsome red. “You’ve given the Gordons a free hand to strike at us as they please!”
“Such is your fear,” said the old woman, her voice now calm and steady. “You fear your enemies will take revenge, but your fear blinds you. Open your eyes as you should have done these past five years. Have you no’ seen those two grow together—he as a prisoner in the laird’s grand house and she as the laird’s pride and joy? Have you no’ seen the stolen glances and secret smiles? Have you no’ seen the love that has blossomed? Young Malcolm’s no’ kidnapping Eilidh—they have chosen to elope together! They’ll be wed afore the next new moon!”
“A Mackay woman wi’ a Gordon man? Neffer!” growled John Mackay.
“Who are you to say such a thing?” the old woman laughed. “Married they will be and, in due course, blessed wi’ strong, healthy bairns. And the bairns will have no hatred of the Mackays, their mother being a Mackay herself. And when Malcolm becomes laird, he’ll no’ send men to raid Mackay lands. He has friends here, and his wife’s kin. He’ll no’ risk them being killed in battle, just as your laird will be loath to risk his daughter and grandchildren! There will be peace now, just as I have ay predicted!”
“Predictions is it?” yelled John. “You’re a witch, you auld hag! A witch and a traitor!”
“There’s a traitor among us, right enough,” Mary said softly, her voice carrying clearly across the water, “but it’s no’ me, John Mackay.”
“We’ll neffer catch up wi’ Miss Eilidh and the Gordon laddie,” Jamie groaned. “There’s no other boat for miles along this shore.”
“Lamont could take him easy with his bow,” said the red-haired man, pointing his sword towards the boat. “He could put an arrow through a sparrow’s eye at this distance.”
“Aye, he’s an easy target wi’ this moon,” agreed John, “and the current would bring the lassie back to us. Where is Lamont?”
“You sent him to fetch the laird, John,” said Jamie.
“Then we’ve lost them,” sighed John. “You hear that, witch? We’ve lost the laird’s daughter and you will pay dear for this! We’ll fetch a boat and come for you by sunrise. Traitor and witch—you will burn for your sins! You will burn to cleanse our shore of your evil!”
“I’ll no’ roast on your devilish pyre!” yelled Mary. “My ancestors settled here on The Corloch over a thousand years past. They built this crannog—my island. I’ve lived here all my days and it is here my days will end.”
From the dark folds of her cloak she drew a long dirk, pointing the blade towards John Mackay and whispering the word, “Traitor.” Then she spun the dirk in her bony hands, the tip touching her breast, and plunged the blade into her heart with a screech that stilled the waters of the loch.
“That’s a grand story and well told,” Hamish congratulated the narrator as the ripple of applause faded and the audience, a group of around a dozen tourists, trooped off along the makeshift bridge linking Auld Mary’s Island to the shore.
“Thank you,” the woman smiled. “They’ll be back for a wee lecture about crannogs and part two of the story once they’ve had their afternoon tea at the picnic spot.” She strode towards Hamish, holding out a hand to introduce herself. “I’m Sally Paterson.”
Hamish pulled his hands out of his trouser pockets and reached forward to shake, but the woman suddenly withdrew her outstretched hand.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, wiping her hands on a cloth she produced from the waistband of her jeans and laughing. “Getting a bit muddy is an occupational hazard on a site like this.”
“Aye, well, I’m fair used to getting my hands dirty in my job as well,” he replied, taking her hand. “I’m Hamish Macbeth.” Up close he could now see that she was taller than he had first thought, elegantly slim with a mane of ash-blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.
“And what brings the police to Auld Mary’s Island, Sergeant Macbeth?” she asked, glancing at the silver chevron badges on the epaulettes of his white uniform shirt.
“Just Hamish will do.”
“So, ‘Just Hamish,’ I’m guessing you know The Corloch quite well.”
“That I do, and I wanted to see for myself what’s been going on up here,” he said, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun with a flattened hand and squinting out over the loch. “Looks like the water’s still disappearing.”
“It is,” she agreed, “and the engineers say we’ll lose a bit more over the next couple of days before it begins to stabilise.”
“I’ve never seen The Corloch so dry. It’s a braw thing they’re doing up in the hills with the new hydroelectric scheme but we don’t want the loch here to vanish completely.”
He looked out over parched, cracked areas of the exposed loch bed closest to the shore, scattered with ancient boulders and more recent driftwood deposited by the receding water. Auld Mary’s Island stood on a shallow ridge that had been carved out of the landscape thousands of years before by a retreating glacier desperately trying to cling to the glen.
“Don’t worry, Sergeant, it won’t vanish. This warm weather has made it seem worse but the streams they have diverted will be flowing again soon and The Corloch will be back to its normal level by the time the winter rains set in.”
“I hope you’re right, but you’re a historian, aren’t you, not an engineer?”
“Actually, I studied geography at university, but that got me interested in geology, archaeology and anthropology.”
“That’s a lot of ‘ologies.’” Hamish smiled, but the expression faded quickly and he looked away from her, casting his eyes over the rocky island. “Where we’re standing is usually covered with water.”
“It is,” she agreed, “but with so much of the island now out of the water, it’s given us a unique opportunity to study how it was built and to find out a bit more about how people lived here through the ages.”
“There’s a fair few of these crannogs scattered across the lochs.”
“There certainly are. Some of them are thousands of years old. It’s amazing to think that people back then had the ingenuity and skill to drive wooden stakes into the bed of the loch or pile boulders in the water to create these islands.”
“I suppose living on an island was good protection from their enemies.”
“And from wild animals—bears and wolves used to roam these parts. The original dwelling on Auld Mary’s Island would have been a wooden roundhouse, but at some point it was replaced by a stone structure that was gradually enlarged.” Sally pointed out the remains of the stone walls. “Auld Mary is thought to have been the last inhabitant. The old stories say that no one would live here after her death.”
“She’d have had no bridge like that thing?” Hamish nodded towards a line of neatly laid wooden pallets that had turned a recently exposed loch-bed ridge into a walkway between the island and the shore.
“That’s a temporary arrangement to let people visit the site here without sinking into the silt or slipping on rocks.”
“So are you learning much about how they lived on—”
“Sergeant Macbeth! A word, if you please!” an unmistakable voice boomed out from the shore.
“Crivens!” Hamish lowered his voice. “Sounds like the big boss. What on earth is he doing up here?”
He turned to see Superintendent Peter Daviot beckoning him from the shore side of the palette bridge. Daviot was barely recognisable in stout walking boots, military shorts and a casual chequered shirt.
“Aye, it’s the superintendent himself,” Hamish sighed, turning back to Sally. “I have to go.”
“Drop by again soon,” Sally said, smiling and waving goodbye as Hamish loped towards the bridge. She raised her voice when he clattered across the palettes. “I’ll be here for at least another two weeks!”
“Good afternoon, sir,” Hamish said, a little out of breath by the time he joined Daviot on the shore. “I hardly recognised you out of uniform.”
“I might say the same about you, Sergeant!” barked Daviot, plucking at Hamish’s white shirt. “I saw you standing with your hands in your pockets, which you well know is not how we do things, and what is this?”
“My shirt, sir?”
“But it’s not your uniform, is it, Macbeth? The correct uniform for a police officer on duty is the regulation black wicking shirt—and where is your equipment? You are wearing no body armour, you have . . .
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