“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 no personal radio, no taser, no service belt, no baton, no handcuffs and you’re not even wearing your cap! Where is your cap and your equipment?”

  “Aye, well, I was chust… I mean I took a wee break and what with it being awful hot and… it’s all in the Land Rover, sir.”

  “You know the force’s insurance doesn’t cover you if you are assaulted on duty and are not wearing protective equipment?”

  “Aye, sir, I know that fine. I was…”

  “Over here, Sergeant!” snapped Daviot, striding towards Hamish’s parked police car and glancing back at a gaggle of middle-aged hillwalkers who were watching impatiently. He lowered his voice when they reached the Land Rover. “Listen, Macbeth, this isn’t about your uniform, although you are most definitely incorrectly attired and… no, don’t get me started on that again. I need you to rescue me from that lot.” He nodded towards the hillwalkers.

  “They seem harmless enough,” Hamish said, with a shrug.

  “You may have noticed my wife among them.” Daviot’s voice was now little more than a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s one of her churchy charity things—a sponsored hillwalk. I need you to get me out of it. Those are, without doubt, the most appallingly dull, dreadful people I have ever had the misfortune to meet.”

  “Aye, they’re a dry-looking bunch right enough,” Hamish agreed. “Och, but… um… with the exception of Mrs. Daviot, of course. I mean…”

  “Shut up and listen, man!” hissed Daviot, leaning a hand on the bonnet of the Land Rover. “I’m leaving my card on the car. When I go back to Susan and her friends, you give me ten minutes and then call me on the private mobile number. Talk for a bit as though you’re reporting on an urgent situation at Strathbane. That way I can tell them I have to get back to the office urgently.”

  Hamish nodded. “Back to headquarters is it, or down to the Strathbane Golf Club?”

  “Don’t be insolent, Macbeth,” warned Daviot. “Play along and I’ll ignore the fact that you’re loafing around out of uniform.”

  “Will do, sir, but,” said Hamish, pausing to make it clear that their little negotiation was not quite concluded, “my white shirts still have years of wear left in them and, you know, people on my patch expect to see their local bobby dressed like a policeman, not like some special forces commando and—”

  “I expect you to draw the appropriate uniform from the stores in Strathbane,” Daviot interrupted, holding up a hand to silence Hamish. “Knowing you, I also expect you will wear exactly what you want on your own patch. Just make that call.”

  Hamish watched the senior officer striding back to the hillwalkers. He ran a hand through his shock of red hair and thought back over the number of times he had saved Daviot’s bacon, not least when he was being blackmailed over some compromising photographs of his wife. Hamish had tracked down the photos and handed them over to Daviot, but he’d kept one. It was supposed to help him deter Daviot from closing down the police station at Lochdubh. That, he thought to himself with a sigh, was maybe a wee mistake. Daviot had sent the despicable Detective Chief Inspector Blair to steal the final photo but Blair had used it to blackmail Daviot himself. Blair was an evil scunner, but also a blundering drunk. Had Blair not been so inept, he might have succeeded in murdering Hamish when he’d become embroiled with Glasgow gangsters not so long ago.

  Hamish felt a sudden chill, as though a cloud had passed across the sun. It was the Glasgow thugs who had murdered Dorothy, the woman he had been set to marry, on the morning of their wedding day. Hamish shook his head. All thoughts led back to Dorothy. Whenever he set foot somewhere they had been together—a beach, a hillside, even his own police station—snatches of conversation filled his head and he could hear her voice as clearly as if she was standing right beside him. He could see her smile, smell her hair, sometimes almost feel her walking arm-in-arm at his side. He thought about her all the time. But that was a good thing, wasn’t it? He had heard that, when you lose someone you love, it can become difficult to picture them in your mind, as though they are fading away. That had never been a problem for him. He saw Dorothy’s beautiful face every time he closed his eyes. That was his comfort. The fact that she was never far from his thoughts meant that, in a very real way, she was still with him. It meant that she would always be with him—

  “Macbeth!” Daviot’s voice echoed along the shore of The Corloch. “Stop daydreaming and get back to work!”

  Hamish climbed into the Land Rover and waited ten minutes, by which time the hillwalkers were completely out of sight, before calling the number on Daviot’s card.

  “Daviot,” came the voice after a few rings.

  “Police headquarters here, sir,” said Hamish.

  “Well what is it, man? You know I’ve taken the day off.”

  “Aye, of course, sir. I… um…” Hamish knew he had simply to fill in time now while Daviot pretended to listen, as though receiving an urgent message, so he rolled out the first things that came into his head. “Well there’s riots in the streets of Strathbane, there’s been ten murders, the Strathbane Bank of Scotland’s been robbed and Her Majesty the Queen is at the front desk because she’s lost her crown jewels. That ought to do you, sir.”

  There was a click and a rustle of movement before Daviot’s voice hissed, “You idiot, Macbeth! I had you on the loudspeaker. Everyone could hear that load of havers! Could you not have come up with something sensible?”

  “Och, that’s a right shame. I didn’t realise…” Hamish was thinking fast. “You can ay tell them that police communications have been compromised by a hacker and you need to get back to headquarters to make sure it gets sorted out.”

  “Yes, yes, that will work,” said Daviot, and hung up.

  Hamish started the engine, then leant forward on the steering wheel and switched the car off again. He threw back his head and laughed. The thought of the looks Mrs. Daviot’s kirk friends must have given her husband when they heard his report from “police headquarters” brought tears to his eyes. He hadn’t laughed like that for months. Suddenly, he felt utterly exhausted. He started the car again and headed home to Lochdubh.

  Hamish crossed the stone humpbacked bridge over the River Anstey and pulled the car over to the side of the road. He had one arm dangling casually out the open window and could feel the warm breeze snaking between his fingers. From here he could see all the way down the road into Lochdubh. The scattering of white-painted cottages, some larger than others, strung out along the road that skirted the edge of the loch, were bathed in sunshine. The air was tinged with the familiar dry smell of heather and the freshness of pine underpinning the faint, lemony scent of wild thyme. It was the smell of home. He drove on down the street, acknowledging a friendly wave from Mrs. Patel as he passed the village’s small supermarket.

  Then he spotted the formidable figures of the Currie twins, Nessie and Jessie, glowering at him from the pavement, two small clouds of misery on an otherwise glorious day. They were dressed identically, as always, their beige, lightweight summer raincoats buttoned up to the neck and their precisely permed grey hair making each a mirror image of the other. Nessie beckoned him.

  “What is it, ladies?” he asked, stopping the car beside them. “I’m awful busy right now.”

  “What kind of woman is it that you’ve brought into the village this time, Hamish Macbeth?” Nessie demanded. “By the looks of things—a painted harlot!”

  “Painted harlot!” echoed Jessie, who had an enormously irritating tendency always to repeat the tail end of her sister’s remarks.

  “I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hamish admitted, shaking his head.

  “Well, she’s waiting for you outside your police station,” Nessie said, indignantly. “As you would know if you were doing your job instead of traipsing off all over the Highlands. She’s been pacing back and forth…”

  “… back and forth…” repeated Jessie.

  “… in her high heels and short skirt…”

  “… short skirt…”

  “… making your police station look like a…”

  “Whorehouse!” squeaked Jessie, then cast her eyes to the ground to avoid her sister’s withering stare.

  “You two had best be on your way,” said Hamish, enjoying the twins’ discomfort at one of them having uttered such a shameful word. “I’ll deal with my visitor, whoever she is.”

  Approaching the police station, Hamish could see a large red Range Rover parked outside and, sitting on the garden wall, a woman with long dark hair, smoking a cigarette. Her skirt was not as short, nor her heels as high, as the Currie twins had led him to believe but her clothes and her make-up were certainly more appropriate for a glitzy city cocktail bar than a sleepy Highland village like Lochdubh.