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and walked away.
    Maisie went slowly indoors. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her. He hadn’t suggested a second date. Philanderer indeed!
     
Chapter Three

    H amish did not want to visit Mrs Gallagher. But the idea that someone had been living in solitude and fear on his beat nagged at him. The wind had
come back and as he drove off, a ragged cloud of crows rose up from the field behind the police station and scattered out over the loch. Low clouds scurried over the mountain-tops. Hamish wondered
if the Romans had held their Saturnalia at just this time as a sort of drunken wake to the death of the year. On such a day it seemed as if the grass would never grow again or the sun shine.
    Mrs Gallagher was out in the fields. As he approached, he could see her striding back
    towards the house. She had seen his arrival and waited at the door for him.
    ‘Well?’ she demanded.
    ‘No news.’
    ‘Then I have no time for you.’
    ‘I would like to speak to you for a little bit.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I want to talk to you about your husband.’
    She ducked her head suddenly to hide her face. She stood like that for a long moment and then took a ring of keys out of the pocket of her old tweed coat and began to unlock the door.
    ‘Come in,’ she said curtly.
    Hamish removed his cap and followed her in.
    She turned to face him. ‘What about my husband?’
    ‘Can we sit down?’
    She nodded. She took off her coat and hung it on a peg by the door.
    ‘It’s like this,’ said Hamish when he was seated. ‘I have reason to believe that you are still afraid of your husband.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with my missing cat?’
    Hamish studied her and then with a sudden flash of Highland intuition, he said, ‘For some reason, you live in fear of him, and when Smoky
    disappeared, you were frightened he had come back to take your cat away. That’s the sort of thing he would do – destroy something you loved.’
    Her face was now a muddy colour. ‘You know him,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve met him.’
    ‘No. But did you never think of appealing to me for help? You could have taken out an injunction against him. Was he ever in prison?’
    There was a long silence. The wind howled around the low croft house like a banshee.
    Then she said, ‘He was arrested for armed robbery. We were living in Glasgow at the time. I saw my chance to get free and took it. My mother had died and left me money. I managed to keep
that fact from him. I drew out all the money and came up here.’
    ‘Look, what’s his full name?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because,’ said Hamish patiently, ‘I can check up on him. I can find out where he is and what he’s doing. He could be dead. Think of that. The man could be dead and here
are you, talking to no one and living scared.’
    ‘Hugh,’ she said. ‘Hugh Gallagher.’
    ‘Last address?’
    ‘Springburn Road, number five-A.’
    Hamish scribbled rapidly in his note book. ‘And when was he arrested?’
    ‘In nineteen seventy-eight. In March. It was the eighteenth when they came for him.’
    ‘Right, I’ll get on to that right away.’
    He stood up. She rose as well and clutched at his dark blue regulation sweater. ‘You won’t let him know where I am.’
    ‘No, no,’ he said soothingly. ‘I’ve told the schoolchildren to help look for your cat, so if you see any of them about, don’t be chasing them off
    She sank back in her chair and covered her face with her hands.
    ‘You should have friends,’ said Hamish.
    ‘You can’t trust anyone,’ she said from behind her hands.
    Hamish left and drove back to the police station. He phoned Strathclyde Police Headquarters in Glasgow and put in a request to find out what had become of an armed robber called Hugh Gallagher,
arrested in March of 1978 for armed robbery.
    They said they would phone him back. He fed his sheep and hens and decided to drive up to the Tommel Castle Hotel to see if there was any news of Priscilla Halburton-Smythe.
    He was welcomed