“Why is it,” Daviot asked Jimmy, “that one highland policeman can find out what we have missed?”
“Maybe it’s old-fashioned policing,” said Jimmy. “Hamish doesn’t have any of the benefits of forensic science and so he has to use his brain.”
A crowd had gathered outside the recycling unit, their faces avid with curiosity in the lights of the halogen lamps which had been erected.
Helen’s body and the supermarket trolley were now shielded inside a tent. “She’s been strangled,” whispered Hamish to Charlie. “Bruises on her neck and her poor face black. I wish these seagulls would go away. I hate them.”
“I think they’ll be here when we’re all gone,” said Charlie. “I mean, that’s the creepy thing about Sutherland when you’re out on your own under the stars. You feel like an intruder. But the birds belong.”
Jimmy came up and demanded a full report. He listened carefully to Hamish’s story about the car. “Get back into Braikie,” he ordered, “and see if you can find where that garage owner lives and then find those Poles.”
They found the garage owner lived in the bottom half of a house near the garage. He was sleepy and cross at being woken up, but he volunteered that the Poles lived in a bed-and-breakfast at the back of the garage.
The door of the B&B was opened by a small woman wrapped in a tatty dressing gown and with her hair in rollers. The minute she saw their uniforms, she began to shriek that she kept a respectable house. Charlie told her in a soothing voice that they simply wanted to speak to her Polish residents.
“First floor left,” she said sulkily. They made their way past her and up the stairs. The car washers turned out to be two brothers. They were not Polish but Lithuanian and their English was not very good. But with patient questioning and showing them a photo of Helen’s car, which Hamish had snapped on his phone, they volunteered that a man had driven it in two days ago. They described him as being tall and dark and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He had been wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.
“That doesn’t sound like anyone we’ve come across so far,” said Charlie gloomily as they left.
“We’ll need to come back in the morning,” said Hamish, “and ask all around.”
He reported back to Jimmy, who told him to write up what he’d got and see if he could find out anything else. Blair was holding an impromptu press conference, swollen up with ego like a bullfrog until a reporter asked him what Strathbane thought about the mistake in pinning the murders on Malky, upon which Blair abruptly stalked to his car and got driven off.
In the morning, Charlie arrived with the news that Mr. Harrison had phoned and wanted to book himself and his daughter-in-law into the hotel. He said he was weary of what seemed like a constant police presence.
“George has said he’ll try to get as much information out of him as possible,” said Charlie.
“Let’s hope the colonel is careful. If our murderer comes for Harrison, he might take out the colonel as well. You’d better nursemaid them, Charlie, and I’ll cover for you. I’ll get back up to Braikie and see if I can find out more about our mysterious car cleaner.”
Before he left, Hamish took the dogs for a walk. He met the Currie sisters and, remembering how rude he had been to them, blurted out an apology.
“What you need is a good woman,” said Nessie.
“Good woman,” echoed Jessie.
Hamish touched his cap and hurried on. Nessie scampered after him. “There’s the widow Banks up at the churchyard at the grave of her wee boy what died of meningitis. She would make a man a good wife. Rosie Banks needs to move on.”
Hamish looked across at the churchyard where a woman was slumped in front of a gravestone.
“I’ll maybe have a word with her later,” he said, and made his escape.
He had taken photographs of everyone at the hunting box on his iPad. He set out for Braikie. The landscape was glittering from the recent rain. He glanced up at the mountains, steel grey against the washed-out sky, noticing every gully and crag sharply defined, and knew that was a sign of more rain to come.
He had not taken his pets with him. Since the loss of Sonsie, he did not feel the need for their constant company. He often thought about Sonsie and mourned the loss of his big cat.
He went straight to the car wash and showed the photographs to the two Lithuanians. They studied them closely and then one of them pointed to the photo of Juris. “Maybe,” he said.
“Was he Eastern European like you?” asked Hamish. They said he hadn’t spoken, merely handed over a piece of paper asking that the car be cleaned inside and out.
“Anything odd about the inside?” asked Hamish. “Bloodstains? Signs of violence?”
They looked at him, puzzled.