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Geordie introduce you to anyone?”
    “Let me see. It was in the spring. He took me round the factory to see if there was anything I wanted to buy. But it’s cheap stuff—T-shirts and jeans mostly. They often get coach parties at the factory. The tourists are presented with T-shirts with the logo i love the highlands on them as part of their package deal. How that factory copes with the Chinese competition, I’ll never know.”
    “Did you ever meet Mrs. Gilchrist?” asked Hamish, wishing she would invite him indoors.
    “Yes, we were invited for dinner last June. Overbearing woman and a bully. Is there anything else?”
    “No.” Hamish half turned away. Then he turned back and blurted out, “Will you have dinner with me one evening?”
    “Oh, why not? It’s pretty boring here. Where?”
    “There’s a good Italian restaurant in Lochdubh. I could drive you over there this evening.”
    “Make it tomorrow. I’ll drive myself over. Say, eight o’clock.”
    “Grand.”
    Hamish sang as he drove to Lochdubh. It seemed such a long time since he had been able to look forward with such anticipation to anything.
    Halfway to Lochdubh, the moors were lit up with a great sheet of lightning followed by a crash of thunder. The rain came down in torrents.
    When Hamish got to Lochdubh, he stopped on the hunchbacked bridge at the entrance to the village to check the height of the water in the River Anstey. He struggled into his oilskins and got down from the Land Rover and leaned on the parapet of the bridge. The water was racing and foaming underneath, the normally placid river having been turned into a raging torrent. He hoped the rain wouldn’t last long or he’d need to get villagers out with sandbags to stop the village being cut off.
    And then like something in a horror movie, a body came hurtling down the water. A white dead face with staring eyes looked up at Hamish before the body rolled over and was swept down into the loch.
    Cursing, Hamish stripped off his oilskins and uniform down to his underpants and made his way down to the beach. He plunged into the water, swam to where he had seen the body disappear, and then dived. He dived and dived again without success. He was about to give up when the fast current from the river pouring into the loch sent the body up to the surface again.
    Hamish grabbed it and pulled it free of the current and towed it to shore while the heavens above flashed with lightning and roared with thunder as if Thor and all his horsemen were riding the inky skies.
    He laid the body on the shingle. It was Fergus McQueen.
    As the pathologist went into a hastily erected tent over the body, the sky was paling in the west. Thunder rolled away in the distance.
    Dick had turned up with dry clothes for Hamish. They stood side by side under a large golf umbrella. A little way away from them stood Blair. His wife, Mary, did her best to keep him off the booze, but Hamish saw, from one look at the man’s truculent and bloated face, that the chief detective inspector had been on one of his binges.
    Police had been sent upstream to see if they could find any evidence of where the body had entered the river.
    A television crew appeared on the scene. To Blair’s fury, the reporter, a small blonde female, went straight to Hamish. “We hear you pulled the body out of the water, Mr. Macbeth. Could you describe what happened?”
    Blair lumbered forward and put his bulk between the camera and Hamish. “Macbeth,” he snarled, “get back to the station and put in your report, then join the others up the stream.”
    “Wait a minute.” Blair swung round. Superintendent Daviot appeared on the scene. “I see no reason why Macbeth cannot give a brief statement to the press,” he said. “Go ahead.”
    Daviot loved appearing on television. He smoothed back the silver wings of his hair and took his place beside Hamish.
    More press arrived in time to hear Hamish’s statement while Blair prowled around, trying to